France Plans 5% Digital Tax as Governments Chase Internet Giants • Hacker News Board

Re: France Plans 5% Digital Tax as Governments Chase Internet Giants

#141

Post by BartBoch » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

sbacic wrote: post #118

r00fus wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that it’s correcting an imbalance? Google operates in France but is able to undercut France businesses for digital content sold to French people ( merchandise is traceable ) because it happens to have an Ireland operation?

If the imbalance is that an Irish company is more competitive than a French one, then no, not really.

In this case, this will be the race to the bottom and smallest countries will be able to charge 0% tax just for the sake of office space rented since their domestic market is small enough to not bring much of income tax (Luxembourg for example).

The issue here is with omitting responsibilities. If a company makes hundreds of millions of income in a country, it should pay some taxes there.

There is a huge push in Poland now, to introduce non-refundable revenue tax (of 1.5%) on larger companies in place of income tax. This would solve the issue entirely.

Re: France Plans 5% Digital Tax as Governments Chase Internet Giants

#142

Post by kortilla » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 6:05 PM UTC

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #129

Proven wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it because of bad laws? No, it's because of the good laws. Taxation is theft. And it's not called tax evasion but tax planning. No one is obliged to pay more than the minimum.

> Taxation is theft. No it isn't. Property rights are determined by the state, hence taxation by the state cannot be considered theft.

That’s not really a valid argument against “taxation is theft”.

As a citizen born in a country, you never enter into an agreement that the government should be able to take a cut of all of your transactions, but that’s what happens and refusal to partake results in violence (an arrest and time in prison).

It’s no different than the local mob going around giving beatdowns to get protection money from businesses. The people that voted for the government sure think it’s different, but it’s not much different to the people who didn’t.

There is a reason they had to put the ability to tax right in the constitution. And there is also a reason the US is no longer part of Britain.

Re: France Plans 5% Digital Tax as Governments Chase Internet Giants

#143

Post by throwaway_9168 » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 6:08 PM UTC

laurentl wrote: post #128

throwaway_9168 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fine print around who actually needs to pay. A very simple example - say you sell online courses. Should you register for VAT?

Well the page on MOSS lists “distance teaching” as falling under the definition of digital services. So I guess the answer is yes?

Alright, thank you. Now, if I were to earn, say a total of $1000 [please feel free to substitute this with a more trivial number, however you may define trivial] for the whole year on online courses sold to EU residents (considering its a side gig, not too shabby), should I still register?

Re: France Plans 5% Digital Tax as Governments Chase Internet Giants

#144

Post by kortilla » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 6:10 PM UTC

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #131

bobl wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe is losing ~globalization and we are fighting over the scraps. Which European country do you think will be overall obviously better in ten years? And not in the sense that "everything gets better", but in the sense of having a high rate of success in converting progress to prosperity. I don't know of any.

The Eastern European countries have been growing consistently for years. If you only look at economics countries like Poland have been doing very well. You have to remember Western Europe has developed economies. They aren't likely to grow at the rate Asian countries are as those economies have a lot of catching up to do. Also European countries don't necessarily have the same priorities as the US for example. Most o…

>Most of us prefer decent workers rights and consumer protections over 1/2% on GDP.

Weird framing considering inviduals don’t care about the GDP. It would probably be better to say that people in the US tend to care about higher incomes vs state entitlements. This is evident in the fact that brining up tax cost per individual is an easy way to kill universal healthcare plans.

Re: France Plans 5% Digital Tax as Governments Chase Internet Giants

#145

Post by BurningFrog » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 6:10 PM UTC

josefx wrote: post #49

ui-explorer12 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tax evasion is illegal; tax minimization is lowering your tax burden using existing laws and is not illegal. Governments should reduce the number of unintentional loopholes but (a) it's far easier to pass new laws than amend old ones, (b) if you change a law that an existing big domestic firm or voting block is exploiting they will let you know at the polls; with a new law you can sell it as "balanced fiscal justice…

> without any honest attempt at simplification, broad application or coordination with other jurisdictions. The problem with that is that the other jurisdictions have no interest in closing tax loopholes. The irish bend over backwards to let Apples unique sheme qualify as double irish (their tax office had to issue several private rulings) and they had no interest in getting rid of the double irish itself either. For…

> The problem with that is that the other jurisdictions have no interest in closing tax loopholes.

A lot of people see that as a feature. "Competitive governance" may be the biggest reason the world works as well as it does.

Re: France Plans 5% Digital Tax as Governments Chase Internet Giants

#146

Post by tonyedgecombe » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 6:14 PM UTC

ttoinou wrote: post #132

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious solution is to eliminate corporation tax and shift it to areas that are harder to avoid such as dividends, capital gains and land value.

Or stop taxing "profits" but tax every transaction on its total amount, that would also end a lot of "tax niches"

We already have VAT or sales tax.

Re: France Plans 5% Digital Tax as Governments Chase Internet Giants

#147

Post by hanniabu » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 6:14 PM UTC

snarf21 wrote: post #62

yann63 wrote: post #2

Couldn't we just ban tax evasion? What makes it so hard? (honest question) A recent European study has shown that the more company win money, the less they pay in taxes (in percentage). Is it because of bad laws? Corrupt politicians? Something else?

As others have said, it isn't evasion but avoidance. The issue is that there a lot of ways to put the money on the books wherever you want it. Let's say you want to sell mobile phones. You could create one company in France that builds, buys and sells phones. In this case it becomes pretty clear it is a French company and all the money will be taxed in France. But let's say you have that same company and split it up…

I was listening to Presidential candidate Andrew Yang in his podcast with Joe Rogan. His plans, since there's a lot of avoidance, is to attempt a different route called a "value added" tax where there's a tax for trucking mileage and online transactions. He mentioned other countries to both of these, but don't remember which he mentioned off the top of my head.

Here's the podcast for those interested, there's a lot of other interesting discussions here that are related to this topic, such as automation and basic income. https://youtu.be/cTsEzmFamZ8?t=843

Re: France Plans 5% Digital Tax as Governments Chase Internet Giants

#148

Post by markdown » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 6:15 PM UTC

ttoinou wrote: post #132

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious solution is to eliminate corporation tax and shift it to areas that are harder to avoid such as dividends, capital gains and land value.

Or stop taxing "profits" but tax every transaction on its total amount, that would also end a lot of "tax niches"

You mean like VAT/GST.

Re: France Plans 5% Digital Tax as Governments Chase Internet Giants

#149

Post by lurker213 » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 6:15 PM UTC

why are governments such parasites? wanting to stick their finger in every pie?

Re: France Plans 5% Digital Tax as Governments Chase Internet Giants

#150

Post by bobl » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 6:16 PM UTC

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #131

bobl wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe is losing ~globalization and we are fighting over the scraps. Which European country do you think will be overall obviously better in ten years? And not in the sense that "everything gets better", but in the sense of having a high rate of success in converting progress to prosperity. I don't know of any.

The Eastern European countries have been growing consistently for years. If you only look at economics countries like Poland have been doing very well. You have to remember Western Europe has developed economies. They aren't likely to grow at the rate Asian countries are as those economies have a lot of catching up to do. Also European countries don't necessarily have the same priorities as the US for example. Most o…

I am not so much concerned about growth as such, but about European countries inability to convert progress into prosperity.

This might not be the best example, but take cars. A country like the US would build a interstate highway system, probably subsidize car manufacturing and go on to create a huge factor of progress for decades to come. You have successfully converted technological progress into a meaningful factor for society. While in a less developed country only the rich will have cars and roads will be broken. Of course these days that era is coming to an end.

The same is true for other things that are progressing. Yet, in few to no European countries would you expect that the fundamentals of the information age like education, health care, housing, infrastructure and work environment will get better and more accessible in the next ten years. At least not organically i.e. without a crash.

What you can say in most countries is that education is getting more competitive, health care more complex, housing less accessible, infrastructure more expensive and work environment less comfortable. This is people fighting each other trying to get whatever there is, not somewhere where people are preparing for the future as societies.

So the only conclusion I can make, while it certainly might not be the correct one, is that Europe is losing. Because if Europe was winning we would be investing in the future and getting it better. Unless we are just hopelessly arrogant, which doesn't bode well either.