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Czech Republic proposes the highest digital tax rate in Europe

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Re: Czech Republic proposes the highest digital tax rate in Europe

#31

Post by Fnoord »

tootahe45 wrote: post #19
tracer4201 wrote: post #13

Why single out Google and FB or tech in general? Is the belief that these companies pay less taxes than non tech companies? I don’t have the breadth nor depth on this topic, just wanting to learn.

Because politicians attack things perceived as bad by the public. If there's a time to implement such a tax it's after a year of sensationalist (and largely fake) news about FB and Google, from exaggerated data breaches to helping terrorists.

I don't know about (any) Google data breaches but the Facebook data breaches are neither fake nor sensationalist.

Re: Czech Republic proposes the highest digital tax rate in Europe

#32

Post by knz42 »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #16
gok wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Corporations absolutely have an AMT.

Hmm... Looks like you're right. How do they manage to pay zero taxes then? I thought AMT assumes that once you're beyond a certain level of income, your lose most deductions and essentially pay a certain percent of the income.

The tax code taxes wins, not revenue.

An org that invests all their margin into growth doesn't pay (as much) tax.

The best way though is to create an offshore subsidiary, and then have the subsidiary invoice the main office for "services" or "IP licensing". The invoice becomes a cost and is deducted from revenue. "Everyone" (all the big players) do things like that. It's 100% legal.

Re: Czech Republic proposes the highest digital tax rate in Europe

#34

Post by megous »

hapless wrote: post #28
pjc50 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People say "zoning problem", but should we really solve the problem that 1 in 6 residences in Edinburgh is an airbnb by building skyscrapers in a World Heritage Site? I suppose it would repel the tourists.

You could try _enforcing_ zoning laws and arresting the people running illegal flophouses. That would be a start.

Not arresting, yet, but Czech Tax Office is getting data from AirBnB on the hosts, and performing checks based on that, so those that avoid taxes may end up in trouble.

https://emerging-europe.com/news/central-prague-does-battle-...

Re: Czech Republic proposes the highest digital tax rate in Europe

#35

Post by temp-dude-87844 »

ShorsHammer wrote: post #25
sokoloff wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full time AirBnB rentals almost certainly exacerbate any housing shortages that might exist. A tourist in general is willing to pay far more (maybe 5-10x) per night of temporary lodging than a resident is willing/able to pay for 365 days per year. This is especially true in beautiful but inexpensive, tourist magnet cities like Prague, Vienna, Budapest, and the like. Taking otherwise available rentals off the full-tim…

Airbnb is highlighting a zoning problem that governments are unwilling to admit to themselves. Sublets and short term rentals existed long before before and most cities on Earth didn't care, but once a frictionless platform came along it suddenly was a problem. My landlord kicked us out to run an airbnb fulltime after seeing how much a neighbour was earning. (Around New Years /Christmas you could easily bring in 2 mo…

AirBnB isn't highlighting a zoning problem; rather, it enables ordinary people to engage in frictionless regulation-skirting commerce. Incidentally, Uber does the same thing.

The problem with this is that it makes masses of lawbreakers out of normal people. When suddenly lots of people are breaking the law, and they're not easily treated as an outgroup, the incentives about enforcing the law get complicated.

Re: Czech Republic proposes the highest digital tax rate in Europe

#39

Post by lugg »

ShorsHammer wrote: post #25
sokoloff wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full time AirBnB rentals almost certainly exacerbate any housing shortages that might exist. A tourist in general is willing to pay far more (maybe 5-10x) per night of temporary lodging than a resident is willing/able to pay for 365 days per year. This is especially true in beautiful but inexpensive, tourist magnet cities like Prague, Vienna, Budapest, and the like. Taking otherwise available rentals off the full-tim…

Airbnb is highlighting a zoning problem that governments are unwilling to admit to themselves. Sublets and short term rentals existed long before before and most cities on Earth didn't care, but once a frictionless platform came along it suddenly was a problem. My landlord kicked us out to run an airbnb fulltime after seeing how much a neighbour was earning. (Around New Years /Christmas you could easily bring in 2 mo…

Zoning problem is a bit of a reach.

A lot of these places are lacking hotels because we don't want them there.

These are residential areas because we want them to be.

We want the tourists, the traffic, and the mess on the other side of town.

You're sort of acting like just because the market wants something it is right to do so and it's a failing of central planning if it differs in opinion about needs.

Re: Czech Republic proposes the highest digital tax rate in Europe

#40

Post by lugg »

laughinghan wrote: post #15
mtgx wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would competition do in terms of how advertising companies benefit from user data? I think the point is to start forcing companies into thinking sensitive user data is a liability that is taxed or worse if they do anything "nefarious" with that data (where nefarious could be whatever we think to put in that law). So it's like asking for Coca-cola to "have competition" (which generally just creates more sugar sod…

This is brilliant, I've never thought of it this way. In a sense, GDPR already kind of does this, increasing the burden of storing user data. Would be interesting to consider dramatically ramp up this burden---maybe with a literal tax---for behavioral data stored longer than 90 days (or some other grace period), like a weaker version of Maciej Ceglowski's Six Fixes. https://idlewords.com/talks/what_happens_next_will_…

That's just going to optimise for short term thinking. Your customers will probably just get treated like crap long term.
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