Three European Countries Block Tax on Tech Giants

Urgh, No?

Zero Corporation Tax allows multinationals to make huge profits and just chuck the money back home, even if that's outside the Union. Yeah, they're probably paying tax on it somewhere, but it's not taxed in the place it was earned. That's the problem here. Countries are losing cash and tax revenue to this.

Your trickle-down economics is similarly unproven.

>> Having a lower corporate tax rate in one country means businesses operating in the EU put their revenue through there

I'm not sure this is true any more, at least not everywhere

"Amazon has become the first technology company to abandon controversial corporate structures that divert sales and profits away from UK in the face of a clampdown imposed by George Osborne.

From the start of [May 2015] the online retailer has started booking its sales through the UK, meaning resulting profits will be taxed by HMRC [the UK tax authority]. The group made $8.3bn (£5.3bn) of worldwide sales from British online shoppers but for 11 years all these internet transactions have been booked in Luxembourg."

source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/23/amazon-to...

>> It's just basic horse-trading

I understand it's all about horse-trading, it's the meaning of the word "everyone" in the claim "a net positive for everyone" that I question.

My understanding of European Union horse-trading is that it's all about "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours". This might well be good for most if not all EU politicians and bureaucrats, it's patently not going to be a net positive for every single citizen.

Example: the travelling circus that is the EU Parliament moving back and forth between BRU and SXB.

"The campaign to end the European parliament's expensive monthly commute to Strasbourg received a boost yesterday when a European commissioner criticised it as a sign of "insanity". Margot Wallstrom, a commission vice-president, said: "Something that was once a very positive symbol of the European Union, reuniting France and Germany, has now become a negative symbol - of wasting money, bureaucracy and the insanity of the Brussels institutions."[0]

"though MEPs have voted to scrap a second parliament, the French government has the power to block any such move [..] It is perhaps the most outlandish of the European Union’s excesses; a £130 million travelling circus that once a month sees the European Parliament decamp from Belgium to France.

Over the course of the weekend, some 2,500 plastic trunks will be loaded on to five lorries and driven almost 300 miles from Brussels to Strasbourg.

On Monday, about 1,000 politicians, officials and translators will then make the same journey on two specially chartered trains hired at taxpayers’ expense."[1]

sources: [0]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/sep/05/eu.politics

[1]https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/10565686/T...

I mean this is a tax problem first and foremost isn't it? The problem being that it's hard for countries to enforce regulations in a virtualized, globalized economy. It's true that it's not just about tax, you also have issues regarding what is and isn't legal in a given country (nazi apology is illegal in France for instance, but good luck enforcing that on the web. Similarly the super harsh "no nudity" rule on american websites is often seen as abusive over here for instance). I mean you seem to agree on that point yourself so it seems that they're not completely wrong to try and fix that.

>They’re just a bunch of jealous incompetent insufferable pompous politicians than don’t understand a thing about the private sector

Talking about knee-jerk reactions.

I strongly dislike this type of empty populist diatribe, that's how we give up on democracy and end up with incompetent fools at the government, just out of spite. Screaming "tous pourris" is not improving anything and is frankly insulting for the many elected officials who are genuinely trying to improve things. Regardless of what they did or didn't do there would be people like you who scream bloody outrage because they're obviously stupid people who understand nothing about nothing. Meanwhile you're not the one trying to balance the budget of a country within the EU.

>let’s fix the tax heavens in Europe then

And how do you propose we do that? Have Le Maire go to the various tax heavens (which in this particular instance would have to include Ireland) and tell them to tax more? How many bottles of Bordeaux would he have to bring to seal the deal?

Having a uniform tax code across the EU would be awesome but it's not like we're anywhere close to something like that.

In that case the economic efficient form of taxation is an expatriation tax.