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The Tax Haven That's Saving Google Billions

businessweek.com

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Re: The Tax Haven That's Saving Google Billions

#231

Post by cletus »

The most important part of this article is:

> The government has made halting steps to change the rules that let multinationals shift income overseas. In 2009 the Treasury Dept. proposed levying taxes on certain payments between U.S. companies' foreign subsidiaries, potentially including Google's transfers from Ireland to Bermuda. The idea was dropped after Congress and Treasury officials were lobbied by companies including General Electric (GE), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), and Starbucks (SBUX), according to federal disclosures compiled by the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics.

The issue is that the US (like many countries) has the best tax code money can buy. The US has the additional problem of dual sovereignty such that the states are competing with themselves to offer tax breaks to lure in companies and thus jobs.

Companies are like water: they seek the lowest level. They're not immoral, they're amoral.

A hideously complicated tax code is going to have holes in it so simplify, simplify, simplify.

Re: The Tax Haven That's Saving Google Billions

#232

Post by zooey »

lionhearted wrote: post #93
Retric wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: Fixed, sorry had a bad copy and paste. You sit at home and come up with a great new piece of software that’s worth 250 million and sell it IBM. Why should you pay more taxes than the bum sitting at home next door? After all you did not use land or resources protected by your countries military and police forces. You did not use public infrastructure (roads, bridges, dams) or government backed institutions (bank…

Edit: You completed edited your comment since I replied... the new version is a lot more reasonable. Here's what I originally wrote, which doesn't 100% apply any more: Did you actually read my comment? I think you're reacting to something I didn't say - taxes are fine, and you'd wind up paying for services you use in property taxes. Land, resources, military, police, roads, bridges, dams, banks (really shouldn't be g…

Banks are not government provided. They are private. And all the time saying that is Government fault when the market turn to shit, it means that it is not science just something you want to be true, no matter what.

If something can't be proved false, you know...

Re: The Tax Haven That's Saving Google Billions

#233

Post by [deleted] »

tyn wrote: post #75
pg wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it ethical to avoid paying tax as an individual? Many would say no. Do you mean avoid (by legal means) or evade (by illegal means)? Any government that uses tax incentives to affect citizens' behavior is saying it's ok to avoid taxes. If they promise your taxes will be lower if you do x rather than y, they're counting on your desire to avoid taxes to motivate you to do x.

Using tax havens is certainly not one of these cases.

[deleted]

Re: The Tax Haven That's Saving Google Billions

#234

Post by philwelch »

rdtsc wrote: post #187
philwelch wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a very common idea among right-wing Americans -- they'd rather have companies take care of us than the government. No, right-wing Americans want to take care of themselves. They would just rather freely pay for certain services (health care, for instance) from competing private firms than be provided it by the government. Framing the question as "who will clothe and feed and wash us" is implicitly a leftist f…

> most people clothe and feed and wash themselves How so? Most don't own the means to produce all those things. Most people buy those goods and choose between a range of available products. The fundamental flaw with that (at least as far as I see) is what happens if the products are unsafe. Imagine that FDA wasn't there (or its European equivalent) and companies could sell you anything whatsoever as food. How often h…

I'm not stating a point here, just describing how some people view things. If you want to argue with a right-wing American, find someone else.

Re: The Tax Haven That's Saving Google Billions

#235

Post by Super_Jambo »

tkahn6 wrote: post #185
notahacker wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which of the above services do you think wouldn't exist if Google avoided less tax? There's an opportunity cost of private companies paying less tax too - either someone else pays more tax which marginally decreases their ability to be productive and enterprising or something purportedly socially beneficial doesn't get paid for. Even coupled with inspired management, the profit motive doesn't ensure that an acquisiti…

Which of the above services do you think wouldn't exist if Google avoided less tax? You're going to have to explain to me how this is relevant. What Google is doing is legal which means that you're trying to make this an argument about ethics. My point is that Google provides real value to millions of people around the world and has the resources, both human and monetary, to make real progress in many areas of techno…

Here in the UK, we do not have a failing healthcare system, I would like to see corporations not waste their money paying people to do utterly non-productive work (like finding and exploiting tax loop holes).

Re: The Tax Haven That's Saving Google Billions

#236

Post by tyn »

tyn wrote: post #75
pg wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it ethical to avoid paying tax as an individual? Many would say no. Do you mean avoid (by legal means) or evade (by illegal means)? Any government that uses tax incentives to affect citizens' behavior is saying it's ok to avoid taxes. If they promise your taxes will be lower if you do x rather than y, they're counting on your desire to avoid taxes to motivate you to do x.

Using tax havens is certainly not one of these cases.

I guess I'm being downvoted for stating the obvious.

Re: The Tax Haven That's Saving Google Billions

#238

Post by anthuswilliams »

codexon wrote: post #224
tkahn6 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has gmail improved your quality of life? Really? The ability to access my email from anywhere, organize, and quickly search through thousands and thousands of emails in seconds has improved my quality of life. Maybe not as much as indoor plumbing, but it has.

Your enthusiasm for gmail has blinded you to the reality. Sure it might be the best thing to you since sliced bread, but in every market estimate, gmail still trails behind hotmail and yahoo mail which means that for most people, gmail is not a radical improvement. http://www.quantcast.com/profile/trafficGraph?wunit=wd%3Acom... http://tctechcrunch.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/gmailvs-hotm... Of course, since you are o…

What does his being a college freshman have to do with the argument? I call ad hominem.

Re: The Tax Haven That's Saving Google Billions

#239

Post by codexon »

anthuswilliams wrote: post #238
codexon wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your enthusiasm for gmail has blinded you to the reality. Sure it might be the best thing to you since sliced bread, but in every market estimate, gmail still trails behind hotmail and yahoo mail which means that for most people, gmail is not a radical improvement. http://www.quantcast.com/profile/trafficGraph?wunit=wd%3Acom... http://tctechcrunch.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/gmailvs-hotm... Of course, since you are o…

What does his being a college freshman have to do with the argument? I call ad hominem.

It has everything to do with the argument.

He thinks that Google invented or revolutionized webmail, maps, etc... when it is clear to anyone who's been on the internet for more than 8 years that they were only incremental updates.

Re: The Tax Haven That's Saving Google Billions

#240

Post by hnal943 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #46
hop wrote: post #31

They follow the letter of the law. If the law is bad, change the law, don't bash Google for managing it's tax liability cost effectively and accuse them of being evil.

"Don't be evil" and "Don't break laws" are very different things. If Google's motto was just "don't break laws", they wouldn't be inviting quite so much criticism for legal-but-dubiously-ethical stuff like this.

It's not evil to keep money you earned.
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