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Tech giants face 2% UK digital services tax

bbc.com

101–110 of 238 posts

Re: Tech giants face 2% UK digital services tax

#101

They'll probably back down when companies threaten to leave. Like Amazon did when threatened with the Head Tax. Or how Dole left Hawaii.

It’s just another sales tax. Amazon already deals with hundreds of different tax rates in different jurisdictions. They’ll just price it in.

Re: Tech giants face 2% UK digital services tax

#102
post #95

This is a pretty good idea. Tech giants make money in Europe paying little to no tax incorporating in Ireland, while all small to medium businesses incorporated in the UK pay the usual tax. Its simply unfair.

The global arguments about multinational tax usually conflate at least two issues:

- total tax the corporate pays globally; and

- share of the cake paid 'locally' vs in the home jurisdiction

This measure seems to me to be more about the second of those than the first, but politically thats a hard sell so you see all the statistics about how much tax they paid 'in the UK' etc etc. Most people misread that.

Politically of course agreeing on a fair share of the cake is much harder than saying 'we should tax them more globally'.

Re: Tech giants face 2% UK digital services tax

#103
post #37
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...).

> They have a negative impact on our domestic businesses (traditional brick and mortar, as well as home-grown digital businesses I have a home grown, UK based digital business. This is going to affect me negatively more than the continued existence of the FAANG companies.

[deleted]

Re: Tech giants face 2% UK digital services tax

#104
post #74
post #65

This will only hurt the people who live in the UK. Those companies will just raise their prices to cover the tax. Sure maybe the local companies could then undercut Amazon if they somehow don't have to pay the tax, but eventually they'll just raise their rates to match because why give up the profit margin if they don't have to? It doesn't matter anyway, the tax will never happen. They're just using it as a point of…

It will not “hurt” people in the UK. If that tax passes through and is applied, it’s possible that the price transfer will only apply to UK residents. In that case, the Treasury will have more money to spend on services for UK residents which would hardly be hurtful.

Sure but then why not just raise taxes on UK citizens?

The whole point of this tax is to penalize the "tech giants" which happen to all be American, and it won't really do that.

Re: Tech giants face 2% UK digital services tax

#105
post #65

This will only hurt the people who live in the UK. Those companies will just raise their prices to cover the tax. Sure maybe the local companies could then undercut Amazon if they somehow don't have to pay the tax, but eventually they'll just raise their rates to match because why give up the profit margin if they don't have to? It doesn't matter anyway, the tax will never happen. They're just using it as a point of…

> This will only hurt the people who live in the UK. Those companies will just raise their prices to cover the tax.

If amazon could charge an extra 3% without losing customers to other suppliers, why wouldn't they do that with or without the tax?

Currently if amazon charge £10 and argos charge £10.20, amazon wins, if amazon charge £10.30 (to 'recover' the new tax), argos wins.

Re: Tech giants face 2% UK digital services tax

#106
post #28

Ed Sheeran pays more tax in the UK than Amazon.

Is this true? Edit: holy moly it is! https://metro.co.uk/2018/10/12/ed-sheeran-may-be-the-worlds-...

Highly unlikely. People like to look only at corporation tax, and ignore everything else.

Re: Tech giants face 2% UK digital services tax

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article seems to be confusing revenue with profit. The $2 billion Amazon made in the UK is revenue; I suspect its profit is actually smaller.

Yeah, that confusion is made clear by the earlier statement that he made `1/5` the profit.... he did not make $400 million, which is 1/5th of 2 billion. It says he made $37 million.

It’s easy to keep profits small when you pay a large “license fee” to your offshore parent company.

Re: Tech giants face 2% UK digital services tax

#108
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Those companies will just raise their prices to cover the tax How exactly will Facebook raise prices in a way that it will hit the average consumer?

They'll raise prices on advertisers in the UK, who will subsequently raise prices on consumers.

“Why weren’t you already charging more, if you could?” Would be my obvious first question at that point, if I was a shareholder.

Re: Tech giants face 2% UK digital services tax

#110

I’ll remind every person here that you are taxed on your revenue, not your profit. It’s worth thinking about because it’s not always been the case in the past that companies had more rights than individuals.

You propose taxing a company on their revenue and also taxing individuals when they realize their capital gains?

Such a high level of double taxation would kill all investment in this country overnight

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