31–40 of 314 posts
Revenue taxes on businesses that are effectively monopolies in their markets are... not smart. They will raise prices by exactly the amount of the tax and the only ones suffering are their customers who now pay 3% more for everything. I bet it would even be added as line item to every invoice “EU Revenue Tax, 3%” I’m sure everyone will love it!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>For the same reason the US government has claim on all global income of both its citizens and corporations. Keyword "IT'S CITIZENS AND CORPORATIONS". The US government doesn't have a claim on all global income of companies that aren't US corporations. e.g. Alibaba. I can't wait to see your reaction when the Chinese government asks for 3% of global revenues of Siemens.
Let's address that when Siemens is evading taxes like US tech companies are. I can understand employees of US based tech companies might have strong feelings about this stance. I'd encourage reflection on taxes and how they pay for societal infrastructure.
If the EU wants to pay for social infrastructure, they need to tax money made within their borders and encourage the development of their own economy. I support Google, Facebook, Apple, and other companies paying taxes on the business they do in your borders, and harmonization of tax rates and laws across the Atlantic, but not some kind of unilateral "Marshall Plan" of taxation without representation. This kind of tax scheme is just going to lead to retaliation, just like tariff trade wars.
Do you really think the US Congress and Administration will sit idly by and let the EU slap, in effect, a global 3% tariff on US corporations and not retaliate?
I fear a real storm on the horizon with all of this growing nationalism. You've got right wing movements cropping up in the EU, you've got nationalism in the US, EU, and China growing.
I don't think trying to claim extra-territorial extra-jurisdictional revenues is a legitimate tactic. And I'm pretty sure you've lose your mind if the CCCP imposed a 3% global tax on your local companies for money they made that was unrelated to exports to China.
Revenue taxes on businesses that are effectively monopolies in their markets are... not smart. They will raise prices by exactly the amount of the tax and the only ones suffering are their customers who now pay 3% more for everything. I bet it would even be added as line item to every invoice “EU Revenue Tax, 3%” I’m sure everyone will love it!
But how does that work with a company like say Google? What prices are there to raise? It's more like they happened upon an incredible natural resource (the users' eyeballs connected to an unregulated digital network newly built by government funds) and are charging whatever price the market will bear. The tax is just a forced extraction of some of that margin, and I'm not sure how they can compensate for that. If an…
A company cannot arbitrarily raise prices in isolation without risk of alienating customers. The difference here would be that both Google and its competitors would be subject to the same price hike.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's address that when Siemens is evading taxes like US tech companies are. I can understand employees of US based tech companies might have strong feelings about this stance. I'd encourage reflection on taxes and how they pay for societal infrastructure.
The Panama Papers revealed Siemens dodging taxes, that's why I chose that example. http://www.dw.com/en/paradise-papers-expose-tax-schemes-of-g... If the EU wants to pay for social infrastructure, they need to tax money made within their borders and encourage the development of their own economy. I support Google, Facebook, Apple, and other companies paying taxes on the business they do in your borders, and harmoniza…
Taxing revenues derived from users in your own country is not extra-territorial taxation.
> I fear a real storm on the horizon with all of this growing nationalism. You've got right wing movements cropping up in the EU, you've got nationalism in the US, EU, and China growing.
As a nationalist in the US (which does not make me right wing, merely empathetic to my fellow citizens first), I fully support the EUs efforts to enforce taxation on foreign tech companies who have been taking extraordinary efforts to evade taxation.
Revenue taxes on businesses that are effectively monopolies in their markets are... not smart. They will raise prices by exactly the amount of the tax and the only ones suffering are their customers who now pay 3% more for everything. I bet it would even be added as line item to every invoice “EU Revenue Tax, 3%” I’m sure everyone will love it!
There are many theoretical possibilities left unconsidered including some obvious ones, such as fewer EU users of the American services, which is a reasonable goal in many ways, including the interest of the citizens.
Also, not sure where you think tax money goes but, when a government is maintained to some extent by a concerned populace, taxation serves the collective interests of a society.
What right does the EU have to tax revenue (not even earnings) from money made on non-EU citizens? I could understand an argument that they have a right to levy a tax on money created by selling services to EU citizens, but global revenues? They mention Twitter as an example in the article, but Twitter's revenues for 2017 was $3.83 billion, and their net-earnings is mostly negative, or barely positive. So they'd be a…
Nothing is really changing in terms of taxation. Technically, the difference is relatively small - being taxed a small percentage of revenue instead of a larger percentage of profit (yes I know it's debatable which would be ideal). The really big difference is they can actually enforce revenue-based taxation, because revenue in a country is directly tied to the number of users/customers in that country. Meanwhile, pr…
But stop focusing on Google for a moment, and consider poor Twitter. Can they really afford this tax? If you're already losing money, or breaking even, why should you have to pay taxes on $$$/user earned in the US or Japan?
We are all in this world together. It is insane that corporations have been able to reap untold profits while hardly being taxed at all. These companies could not exist without the societies of the people who buy their products. They should pay taxes wherever they do business, even if fiat currency isn't changing hands (i.e., Facebook and Twitter free users) as specified here. Good move EU. Higher taxes on megacorps…
Out of curiosity, is there any European tech company that has 750m in taxable annual revenues?
Revenue taxes on businesses that are effectively monopolies in their markets are... not smart. They will raise prices by exactly the amount of the tax and the only ones suffering are their customers who now pay 3% more for everything. I bet it would even be added as line item to every invoice “EU Revenue Tax, 3%” I’m sure everyone will love it!
But is it worse than a standard earnings tax?