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Tech Giants Set to Face 3% Tax on Revenue Under New EU Plan

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Re: Tech Giants Set to Face 3% Tax on Revenue Under New EU Plan

#91

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!

Well even worse, with the 3% revenue tax, european customers would have exactly no benefit. the streets in europe will stay the same, the governement would still waste money for more staff (see germany for example, and trade it for police and customs). european would get even more bureaucratic and it will cost even more than the 3% will gain.

it's basically the same precedure as everytime.

Re: Tech Giants Set to Face 3% Tax on Revenue Under New EU Plan

#92

Incorporate your business outside the EU. It will protect you from unreasonable taxes and regulations. The internet has no boundaries or residency or citizenship. Especially if you are a software-as-a-service business, ignore everything about the EU and domicile outside it.

The EU will block your service's access into the EU market. That's their only possible next recourse if you simply ignore them and stay out of their jurisdiction physically (in a scenario where you continue to sell to EU customers, but refuse to abide by their policies such as this tax). They'll also go after the payments side, they'll try to shut off your ability to get the payments from EU customers. Going down the…

>There can be no other possibility if they plan to see this path through to its logical conclusion.

I foresee a future, where EU users (and users "behind" the Chinese firewall) acquire crypto currency facilitated through p2p dapps and acquire tokens to be able to advertise their products/services over other dapps to other users in the EU.

I look forward to this game of increasingly expensive wack-a-mole that will enable the next generation of economic activity with technology.

The facebook's and alphabet's may not adapt to something like this (hard to change the course of these giant behemoths), but increasingly more, newer enterprises will be incentivized to go down this path (and users within these jurisdiction who don't really care for these rules and will have increasingly easier technical access to these services).

Though of course reactionaries will be totally blind to this (their heads are in the sand) because they will be happy to see their respective local diktats pander to their world view, rather than explore the realm of possibilities that all sorts of actors may pursue.

Re: Tech Giants Set to Face 3% Tax on Revenue Under New EU Plan

#93

Incorporate your business outside the EU. It will protect you from unreasonable taxes and regulations. The internet has no boundaries or residency or citizenship. Especially if you are a software-as-a-service business, ignore everything about the EU and domicile outside it.

The EU will block your service's access into the EU market. That's their only possible next recourse if you simply ignore them and stay out of their jurisdiction physically (in a scenario where you continue to sell to EU customers, but refuse to abide by their policies such as this tax). They'll also go after the payments side, they'll try to shut off your ability to get the payments from EU customers. Going down the…

The critical difference here is that China is trying to block their citizens from seeing data hostile to the government, whereas the EU is trying to protect its citizens from companies hostile to its citizens.

I wish all our countries were so enlightened as to stand up to protect us from multinational corporations exploiting loopholes in the law.

Re: Tech Giants Set to Face 3% Tax on Revenue Under New EU Plan

#94
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As an answer big techs will likely break these companies into 100 smaller ones to avoid the thresholds? That sounds like a huge win to me. More competition is better for the market at a whole, and these 100 smaller companies will not be able to stop from competing with each other (or maybe we'll learn they just were better off as separate companies in the first place...)

>> More competition is better for the market at a whole, Hold on...they will be different companies just on the paper...more like Google1, Google2 and Google3.. instead of one big Google.

This is what these companies are already doing, and exactly what this law is designed to address. Bear in mind, one of the top ways these companies currently avoid being taxed is to claim they had no profit... because Google France had to spend all it's supposed gains licensing permission to call itself "Google", a trademark of the US company. (Apple, Microsoft, etc. all do the same.)

Re: Tech Giants Set to Face 3% Tax on Revenue Under New EU Plan

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most companies have negative profit. All the revenue is offset against r&d and expansion

yeah...they are non-profit right? :)) Let's take Amazon for example, or Google or Facebook...how much do they invest in R&D? Last time I've checked they reported billions in profit every quarter.

Amazon is notorious for reporting approximately zero profit.

Re: Tech Giants Set to Face 3% Tax on Revenue Under New EU Plan

#96
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is it worse than a standard earnings tax?

Well, any companies that just squeaked out a 3% margin won’t be too fond of it.

Then you just pass the extra percentage to the business.

It's not like GST is any different.

Re: Tech Giants Set to Face 3% Tax on Revenue Under New EU Plan

#97
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are up in arms about China as well, and IMHO, the US and EU should take them to the WTO over unfair trade practices. 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?

> consider poor Twitter. Can they really afford this tax? If they can't afford a simple tax on their business in a region then they shouldn't be doing business there or at all. What do you mean, "poor Twitter"? It's not a person. It doesn't have emotions or feelings. We don't need to treat it like a poor little snowflake and make sure it never melts. If Twitter can't handle being taxed then Twitter should die. That's…

Being taxed to death is not "capitalism". Get a better dictionary!

Re: Tech Giants Set to Face 3% Tax on Revenue Under New EU Plan

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU will block your service's access into the EU market. That's their only possible next recourse if you simply ignore them and stay out of their jurisdiction physically (in a scenario where you continue to sell to EU customers, but refuse to abide by their policies such as this tax). They'll also go after the payments side, they'll try to shut off your ability to get the payments from EU customers. Going down the…

The critical difference here is that China is trying to block their citizens from seeing data hostile to the government, whereas the EU is trying to protect its citizens from companies hostile to its citizens. I wish all our countries were so enlightened as to stand up to protect us from multinational corporations exploiting loopholes in the law.

I trust all governments 100% to do what is in my best interest. /s

Re: Tech Giants Set to Face 3% Tax on Revenue Under New EU Plan

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the business purpose of using amazon.co.uk rather than Amazon US if you're warehousing in the US and shipping worldwide?

I can think of a few off the top of my head. Bouncycastle (a crypto library) is hosted in Australia because I think the US crypt laws want to ban the export (download) of military grade munitions. Great Gatsby (the novel) is free to download if hosted in Australia. In the US, the copyright laws forbid the download of Great Gatsby mainly because of Disney. Ever wonder why Mickey Mouse isn't in public domain? Also, if…

Is hosting not analogous to warehouseing? I mean if you warehouse pot in the us and sell in Amsterdam you're still violating local laws based on where your warehouse is and if you host the great Gatsby in the us to deliver to Australia then you're violating local laws where you are hosting too.

You can reverse it and have pot in the Netherlands or great Gatsby in Australia to send to the US, but weve had the term smuggling to cover that situation as well

Re: Tech Giants Set to Face 3% Tax on Revenue Under New EU Plan

#100

If you are gonna have a form of corporate tax, a tax on revenue is the best way to do it. This will raise prices of goods the least and directly target the largest companies.

well many people unfortunately do not understand that taxes like this get past on to everyone. most only see the tax on their receipt. embedded taxes are the greatest tool of the tax collector

this is something that gets thrown around a lot, but its manifestly untrue, if corporations could easily charge more, they would, and they would pocket the difference as profit.

Taxes in general reduce profit, they do not increase prices.

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