71–80 of 324 posts
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That’s quite the claim. Got anything to back it up? Pretty easy really. Multiply the cost of unemployment benefits * number of company employees in that country. Then look at the tax evaded by the company. "You do the math". JSA in the UK is £73/week, or £3796/year. Let's say a company dodges £1Bn/year in taxes. How many people would they need to employ before the country breaks even?
It really is that easy folks
I didn't even need to click the link to know that Ireland was gonna be one of the three. It's like they have a vested interest, or something.
The way to go Ireland. A ridiculously stereotypical statement from the French finance minister: “It just remains for me to offer Paschal a beer in a Dublin pub, and then I think we’ll be able to move toward a decision,” he said, referring to his Irish counterpart, Paschal Donohoe
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Spoken like somebody who knows very little about the topic. The effective tax rate is far lower than this, but also, most countries have an effective tax rate for megacorps far lower than what they advertise once exemptions, subsidies and tax-breaks come into play.
Yes but a lot of that is done by allowing large companies to offshore their profits.
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Good for them. France and Germany take endless steps to protect their domestic economic interests regardless of what any EU legislation or sense of fairness says, Ireland is well within their rights to do the same.
Ireland have already been given some lucky charms by the EU. For example, they were given permission to set their corporate taxes to a ridiculously low 12.5%.
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Honest question: why should I as a person be taxed on income (the closest I guess I can get to the concept of revenue) but a business should be taxed on profit? Can anyone explain to me the basis for such a distinction?
Let's say you operate a low margin business, such as a gas station. All numbers are before tax. For the year, you spend $1,000,000 paying for fuel, convenience store supplies, electricity, wages, etc. You get $1,050,000 in revenue from your customers, for a fairly realistic margin of 5%. Now let's say you run a software business. You pay $500,000 in electric bills, computers, wages, etc, and collect $1,000,000 in rev…
You are being a little bit funny here. This paragraph basically proves the OP's point.
Because companies would never abuse the taxation rules, of course. They would never cheat by shifting money around in opaque ways so as to lower the profits they have to report for taxation purposes. Clearly, that's why they can be trusted to be taxed on profits rather than revenue, but mere mortals cannot.
/sarcasm
I think in your gas station example, the net effect of a 4% tax on revenue would naturally be a 4% increase in the sales price of goods. Or, the gas station would go out of business...
I actually don't think a flat revenue tax would necessarily overall be better than the current system where taxes are based solely on profits, precisely because of examples like the one you give. It seems like some sort of combined model of a revenue tax and profit tax may be the way to go. Which is incidentally where the EU was going with this particular proposal.
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Ireland have already been given some lucky charms by the EU. For example, they were given permission to set their corporate taxes to a ridiculously low 12.5%.
Why would a sovereign state even need permission from others about purely internal matters such as corporate income tax rates?
Denmark is a taxhaven in its own sense for holding companies which might be surprising to many. The country primarily tax income not companies and have a high (deductible for companies) sales tax.
The Danish corporate tax rate is within the EU average.
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Ireland have already been given some lucky charms by the EU. For example, they were given permission to set their corporate taxes to a ridiculously low 12.5%.
Why would a sovereign state even need permission from others about purely internal matters such as corporate income tax rates?
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I'm so happy the people of Sweden are sane, my biggest problem with these taxes is that they are on revenue which essentially makes all low margin internet businesses unprofitable. How does that benefit consumers?
Honest question: why should I as a person be taxed on income (the closest I guess I can get to the concept of revenue) but a business should be taxed on profit? Can anyone explain to me the basis for such a distinction?
As an individual taxpayer you can deduct certain expenses from your revenue when calculating your taxable income, just like a business. But businesses do generally have a broader set of deductible expenses.
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Good for them. France and Germany take endless steps to protect their domestic economic interests regardless of what any EU legislation or sense of fairness says, Ireland is well within their rights to do the same.
Ireland have already been given some lucky charms by the EU. For example, they were given permission to set their corporate taxes to a ridiculously low 12.5%.
For example:
Hungary 9%, Bulgaria 10%, Lithuania 15%, Romania 16%, Croatia 18%, Poland 19%, Czech 19%, Slovenia 19%, UK 19%, Estonia 20%, Finland 20%, Latvia 20%
Even Denmark is at 22% and Norway is at 23%, traditionally high tax countries.
Outside the EU in Europe you have Montenegro 9%, Macedonia 10%, Bosnia 10%, Serbia 15%, Georgia 15%, Albania 15%, Belarus 18%, Russia 20%, Armenia 20%.
Another decade of rate competition and the EU average might be down to something close to 18%.
The real unusual stand-outs these days are the high total rate nations, like France, Belgium, Greece and Germany, rather than the low rate nations.