Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
France Plans 5% Digital Tax as Governments Chase Internet Giants
161–170 of 304 posts
Re: France Plans 5% Digital Tax as Governments Chase Internet Giants
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn’t know what this was, so I checked ( https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/taxation/vat/vat-digit... ). Long story short: MOSS stands for “mini one stop shop” and looks explicitely designed to make it easier to sell across the EU . > The Mini One-Stop-Shop (MOSS Scheme) enables you to supply digital services within the EU without the need to register in each EU country you supply to. It can be used by both EU-…
I can sell services domestically up to a limit of about 40,000 euros before I need to register and account for VAT. If I make even a single EU sale, I must immediately register for VAT and pay tax on that sale, either through MOSS or directly to the country my customer is in. The EU is now "generously" considering introducing a limit of 10,000 euros before you need to register for VAT. I also need to disagree with th…
> The EU is now "generously" considering introducing a limit of 10,000 euros before you need to register for VAT.
No, that limit was passed in 2017 and took effect for digital services in January 2019:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:32...
I.e. if your cross-border EU sales of digital services are less than 10 000 €, you can consider the sales domestic.
Re: France Plans 5% Digital Tax as Governments Chase Internet Giants
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doing business with tax havens should be illegal. A tax Haven creates an agreement between companies and a country to steal another country tax reveneu. Tax havens produce close to nothing, so they have very small exports. It's just a legal arrangement that has nothing to do with production.
You are assuming that somehow that tax revenue is theirs in the first place. What if that tax rate makes a business non-profitable in France but a money-making machine in Ireland? Also, too much focus is centered around taxes when spurious regulations are generally more damning for a lot of companies. For example some friends of mine have attempted to start escape rooms, they have all abandoned their pursuits because…
Escape rooms and haunted houses are a nightmare in local fire code in the states as well. Ends up putting a lot of smaller productions out of business.
Re: France Plans 5% Digital Tax as Governments Chase Internet Giants
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
Suddenly it strikes me that one fix might be eliminating international subsidiaries. It's possible it would be hard to enforce in practice, but the crux of the problem is the absence of a competitive relationship & autonomy between these supposedly independent companies.
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.
How does that help France? Those taxes would still be paid in Ireland.
Re: France Plans 5% Digital Tax as Governments Chase Internet Giants
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 o…
A VAT tax makes a lot of sense. It would reduce the incentive for large market quasi-monopoly seeking companies to optimize for no profits to avoid taxes. The current dynamic is- why pay taxes when you can spend it to expand your market share?
Re: France Plans 5% Digital Tax as Governments Chase Internet Giants
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
The money is collected by Google Ireland. So they're going to charge Google Ireland? It's probably safe to assume they're not charging Google LLC in Delaware.
Presumably France has access to the not in considerable French origin advertising revenues.
How? Based on VAT? I can think of multiple approaches, but each of them is convoluted or deviating from existing norms in its own way. Every time there's an announcement like this, it's often surprisingly low on actual details.
Re: France Plans 5% Digital Tax as Governments Chase Internet Giants
#167Can anyone comment on how this interacts with the idea of the single market? Why can Google Ireland Ltd. be charged a special tax for doing business in France? In my (limited) understanding I thought this was not supposed to happen, and that most goods and services could automatically be sold EU-wide. France could not charge import duties on Guinness trucks, nor demand that beer good enough to be sold in Ireland is n…
The issue is that large multi national corporations do advanced tax planning so they pay little or no tax. Usually they move profit vs losses around different countries to zero out the tax plus tax loop holes.
French people need French tax so that they can build schools, roads and hospitals. Large corps later benefit from having public infrastructure in the form of advanced labor.
Re: France Plans 5% Digital Tax as Governments Chase Internet Giants
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
We already have VAT or sales tax.
> Or stop taxing "profits" By "profits" I meant to stop business being able to claim expenses and reduce the tax. We could replace complex taxation scheme only-on-positive-profit with a simple 1% (for example) tax on all transfers, on the total amount, no matter what is the purpose of the money transfer
That incentivizes the creation of vertically-integrated conglomerates over small companies, in order to reduce the number of transactions; is that what you want to foster?
Re: France Plans 5% Digital Tax as Governments Chase Internet Giants
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Or stop taxing "profits" By "profits" I meant to stop business being able to claim expenses and reduce the tax. We could replace complex taxation scheme only-on-positive-profit with a simple 1% (for example) tax on all transfers, on the total amount, no matter what is the purpose of the money transfer
The trouble with that is it will penalise low margin businesses, Apple could easily afford it on their 30% margin but a budget PC maker with a 3% margin would struggle.
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Re: France Plans 5% Digital Tax as Governments Chase Internet Giants
#170why are governments such parasites? wanting to stick their finger in every pie?
why are corporations such parasites? benefiting from the citizens in a country like France that are supported by its social services and infrastructure like roads, healthcare, a justice system that prevents the corporation's property from being stolen, but not contributing their fair share of the tax back and even arrogantly denying that they are benefiting from the infrastructure that they are taking advantage of fo…
you do know that the citizens of said country pay tax for that infrastructure right? failing governments should stop using big companies as scapegoats. the bits and bytes used by FB and other big companies aren't degrading the fibre optics like a highway...
what I find funny is that if politicians wanted to close these tax loopholes, they could, I think they'd rather keep them open for them and their friends to use. The optics are better if they point the finger at something foreign and say 'oooh they are the bad ones', even though technically they are not breaking any laws.
I say this not as a fan of Facebook or Google. But you need to be realistic about government's always wanting more money.