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Tech giants face 2% UK digital services tax

bbc.com

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Re: Tech giants face 2% UK digital services tax

#41

Post by user5994461 »

nine_k wrote: post #9
fredley wrote: post #5

Good. It is becoming more and more apparent that there is a toll on society created by these companies. They have a negative impact on our domestic businesses (traditional brick and mortar, as well as home-grown digital businesses) not to mention our mental health and even democracy. By taxing them, hopefully we can go some way to reversing some of that damage (although I'm less hopeful of that...).

So you see it as a tariff? Do not let the more efficient foreign player in, to let the local equivalent develop? Economically it does not make sense, if we are looking for a global optimum (literally); this is the standard free-trade argument. It may make sense if there's no global trust; you don't want to depend on products of a potential unfriendly party, or let them have a large foothold in your economy, just, wel…

There is no global economy. The mere notion of global doesn't make sense since everything is local.

Education and healthcare are provided locally "for free", assumed to be covered by taxes. It doesn't work if everything you ever pay or buy is magically transferred abroad and skip tax collection.

Of course, these are basic services provided in most of Europe. It may be seen differently in a different location that doesn't provide these.

Re: Tech giants face 2% UK digital services tax

#43

Post by chrisseaton »

moate wrote: post #27
Rjevski wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's about taxing giant corporations who are evading taxes. I wouldn't say "evading" unless what they are doing is illegal. If they are following the law, and the law allows what they're doing, then it's not tax evasion. If you're not happy, then change the law to actually make it illegal, and then if those companies are still doing it then you can call it tax evasion.

I mean, the UK is literally changing the law to require them to do it because they felt that the companies weren't paying their fair share, so it seems like they felt that something wasn't quite right.

The fact that they changed the law rather than used the existing one makes it crystal clear that it was legal.

Re: Tech giants face 2% UK digital services tax

#44

Post by GunlogAlm »

infinitone wrote: post #17
user5994461 wrote: post #15

I was scared for a minute. I thought this was about taxing consumer for accessing internet. It's fine. It's about taxing giant corporations who are evading taxes.

It'll likely trickle down to the consumer... the consumer will end up paying somehow.

That's a line pushed by large corporations to convince people that money saved through tax avoision is somehow benefiting the consumer. Companies should pay their fair share of tax.

Moreover, the argument makes little sense when dealing with companies like Google and Facebook. The average consumer isn't paying for access to Google Search, Gmail, or Facebook...

Re: Tech giants face 2% UK digital services tax

#46

Post by dbbk »

mFixman wrote: post #40
dabeeeenster wrote: post #16

Ed Sheeran pays more tax in the UK than Amazon.

Ed Sheeran is a person and is taxed differently than a company. That article is manipulative clickbait. UK Amazon executives pay more taxes than Ed Sheeran.

The article is talking specifically about his company, Ed Sheeran Ltd, not his personal taxes.

Re: Tech giants face 2% UK digital services tax

#48

Post by Joe-Z »

chrisseaton wrote: post #38
eertami wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Like we all do with our ISAs and pensions I think it's a bit disingenuous to suggest it's like that, because the average person is not worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Sorry but you cannot in good faith compare the impact of tax avoidance by Amazon to an individual's pension. The problem really is that the loopholes are inaccessible to regular small businesses. A lot of small companies _do_ pay a fair level of…

It’s fine to debate morals. But it’s important to make a distinction between legal and illegal. You’re accusing them of having a different opinion on a moral isssue to you. That’s one thing. Accusing them of doing something illegal - that’s something else. And it’s now super clear that it’s legal, since we’ve decided we have to introduce a new tax to tax them. My issue isn’t with the debate - it’s about being precise…

I don't get it. On the one hand you say you just wanted to make clear the distinction between the two terms, on the other you claim when facebook and Amazon are avoiding taxes that's the same as when ordinary people try to save for retirement.

If you didn't want to be quoted on that you shouldn't have put that comparison in.

Re: Tech giants face 2% UK digital services tax

#49

Post by notahacker »

7952 wrote: post #33
notahacker wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, what seems to have provoked this tax in the UK specifically is the tendency for such companies to artificially lower their profits to more or less avoid UK corporation tax altogether by claiming that sales of UK clicks to UK companies handled by UK based account managers were in fact completed in Ireland...

Although isn't it the case that the actual product is almost entirely developed outside of the UK. It doesn't seem unreasonable to repatriate money to pay for that. It is exactly what happens to physical products that are manufactured overseas. The correct way of taxing that is VAT.

Companies aren't repatriating profits to Ireland or Bermuda because they're developing the product there...

Re: Tech giants face 2% UK digital services tax

#50

Post by repsilat »

fredley wrote: post #5

Good. It is becoming more and more apparent that there is a toll on society created by these companies. They have a negative impact on our domestic businesses (traditional brick and mortar, as well as home-grown digital businesses) not to mention our mental health and even democracy. By taxing them, hopefully we can go some way to reversing some of that damage (although I'm less hopeful of that...).

A level playing field makes sense, and domestic companies are at a disadvantage if their local profits are taxed while foreign companies' "local profits" are taxed offshore at a lower rate.

That said, this doesn't level the playing field, it tips it towards local companies. The tax on business revenues should apply to domestic companies as well, and it should apply to businesses of all sizes. If it has to be netted against taxes on earnings ("tax is the larger of...") to make it not punish local businesses then they should do that.

Anything else harms the consumer by distorting the market.

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