Google now pays more money in EU fines than it pays in taxes

On (ii), ANY and all costs incurred in operating a company, including paying VAT, can be deducted from revenues while calculating profit. That in NO WAY takes away from the actual VAT being paid to the government!!! HOW exactly does that "generally net to zero."? It certainly reduces profits, but unlike other "costs" that reduce profit calculation, VAT cannot be viewed as tax avoidance, if anything, the resultant profits post VAT are still subject to corp income tax, constituting double taxation. No CPA will advise a company to pay more VAT as a tax avoidance strategy, so I'm still trying to understand why booking VAT payments under "costs" net to 0, and for whom?

The entire premise of VAT is to guarantee a certain income for the government, as a % on EVERY transaction that happens in the economy. Hence, the mere existence and operations of Google in the EU resulting in transactions, is a source of VAT income for the government. Google can always move ALL incorporation out of the EU, and buyers can make "American" transactions to an American company that completely circumvent EU VAT. By choosing to have an EU entity subject to EU VAT, Google is contributing to EU coffers.

Unless there is an agenda to malign Google, ignoring government income from Google's operations seem convenient, and click-bait-ey.

Google recorder $40B in EU revenues in 2017. About 20%, or $8B was the VAT related revenues that EU received. Let's move all that away from the EU, since it's all one big non-tax.

Also, let's abolish VAT, as my "ignorance of how VAT on business expenses actually works" is being exploited by big-evil Google for tax avoidance. Everyone knows that paying VAT is the #1 way to reduce tax liabilities, translated, "let's all pay taxes on transactions, as a way to avoid taxes on income! Hurrahs all around for the genius CPAs".

VAT is an evil tax on revenues (transactions), that sellers conveniently pass on to the buyer. Whether you agree or not, every seller is also a buyer, and VAT merely increases the cost of doing business, while also effectively acting as a double-taxation ploy, as profits are subject to income taxes. Who ends up footing the VAT bill is immaterial, as VAT goes under "costs" that were previously $0, unless you're a company that buys nothing to sell something. And whether it's booked as "costs" or not, it's a tax that the government receives on transactions under it's jurisdiction. Buying ads from a US company as a US transaction doesn't incur a VAT cost on an EU company, hence, Google's EU presence is a net positive for EU coffers!

Please do yourself a favour and educate yourself on what VAT is before you Dunning-Krugersplain what the EU wants from it, how much you think it is worth to the economy and what you think an accountant would recommend a business does (I can recommend a good search engine as a starting point!). The entire point of VAT that it's a tax on the consumer of the final product only, and that businesses get to deduct all the VAT levied on intermediate goods they've purchased to make and market the final product. That's literally the most basic, definitional aspect of VAT that sets it apart from traditional sales taxes. Since Google Ads are bought almost exclusively by businesses, EU member states (the EU doesn't actually levy VAT itself) receive a net tax benefit from VAT paid on Google Ads only on ads bought for personal enjoyment or by VAT exempt organizations, which must be a tiny proportion of their sales. Now there's an argument that Google's customers' customers would buy fewer taxed goods and services if they didn't see the ads, but that's a very different argument and certainly not something you could object to journalists not counting as "government income from Google's operations"