21–30 of 88 posts
I wonder how this is going to affect small businesses selling digital services to different countries within the EU while only having one office/country of incorporation. "The first pillar is dividing up the rights to tax a company where its goods or services are sold even if it does not have a physical presence in that country."
This is kind of surprising in case of Britain. As long as I remember both Cayman islands and City of London, two of the best known tax havens, are British territories so Britain could prevent tax evasion easily.
When it comes to "taxing" those pesky Facebooks and Netflix globally, I am not sure I understand justification for this.
Companies pay taxes because they use resources and services provided in a given country (roads and other infrastructure, police protection, courts, etc.). Facebook does not use any resources in, say, Belgium, so why it should be taxed there?
If a company located in US, like Facebook, avoids paying taxes there (strange that someone who pretends to be rather left leaning person like FB owner escapes taxes, but that's a different story) it is the US problem, not a global problem and they should sort this out somehow - for instance make FB to pay directly for services/resources provided by the state, maybe in the global economy corporate tax does not make much sense any more? I can imagine that Facebook has some fake office on Caymans, but I hardly believe they would relocate there data centers and employees to avoid taxes, so making tax proportional to number of employees in the given jurisdiction, size of the office, used electricity, etc. might make sense.
"Britain and France have been among the most vocal proponents of proposals to tax big" This is kind of surprising in case of Britain. As long as I remember both Cayman islands and City of London, two of the best known tax havens, are British territories so Britain could prevent tax evasion easily. When it comes to "taxing" those pesky Facebooks and Netflix globally, I am not sure I understand justification for this.…
That's one view. Another is that they pay taxes simply because they have resources that society needs. If Facebook is trading in the UK (benefitting from access to the UK market, then I think it is reasonable that they pay tax in the UK).
"Britain and France have been among the most vocal proponents of proposals to tax big" This is kind of surprising in case of Britain. As long as I remember both Cayman islands and City of London, two of the best known tax havens, are British territories so Britain could prevent tax evasion easily. When it comes to "taxing" those pesky Facebooks and Netflix globally, I am not sure I understand justification for this.…
Examples of X: MrJet and Trivago.
"Britain and France have been among the most vocal proponents of proposals to tax big" This is kind of surprising in case of Britain. As long as I remember both Cayman islands and City of London, two of the best known tax havens, are British territories so Britain could prevent tax evasion easily. When it comes to "taxing" those pesky Facebooks and Netflix globally, I am not sure I understand justification for this.…
> Companies pay taxes because they use resources and services provided in a given country (roads and other infrastructure, police protection, courts, etc.). That's one view. Another is that they pay taxes simply because they have resources that society needs. If Facebook is trading in the UK (benefitting from access to the UK market, then I think it is reasonable that they pay tax in the UK).
Every rich person in the UK is incorporated in British overseas territory. Shouldn't they be the first to be taxed ?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you provide some examples there support this claim of a "winner-takes-it-all economy"?
Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google should suffice.
None of these companies are taking it all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google should suffice.
Facebook has a plenty of competition in the social media space, Apple certainly isn't the only hardware manufacturer, Amazon has competition everywhere and so does Netflix. Google hardly runs the only ad network. None of these companies are taking it all.
Please give some examples.
"Britain and France have been among the most vocal proponents of proposals to tax big" This is kind of surprising in case of Britain. As long as I remember both Cayman islands and City of London, two of the best known tax havens, are British territories so Britain could prevent tax evasion easily. When it comes to "taxing" those pesky Facebooks and Netflix globally, I am not sure I understand justification for this.…
> Companies pay taxes because they use resources and services provided in a given country (roads and other infrastructure, police protection, courts, etc.). That's one view. Another is that they pay taxes simply because they have resources that society needs. If Facebook is trading in the UK (benefitting from access to the UK market, then I think it is reasonable that they pay tax in the UK).
That is called theft, is not a view of any kind, and the prevention of which is literally the reason "society" was formed in the first place
"Britain and France have been among the most vocal proponents of proposals to tax big" This is kind of surprising in case of Britain. As long as I remember both Cayman islands and City of London, two of the best known tax havens, are British territories so Britain could prevent tax evasion easily. When it comes to "taxing" those pesky Facebooks and Netflix globally, I am not sure I understand justification for this.…
The only problem is usually: why the hack the Alaskian company should pay. But for our global companies the situation is different: when they want to charge someone in France for services, then France has a way to collect :).
"The U.S. government has voiced concern in the past that the European campaign for a “digital tax” unfairly targets U.S. tech giants." How about admitting that the U.S. tech giants unfairly use their monopolistic powers because the Internet has become a winner-takes-it-all economy.
The issue isn’t so much any anti-competitive misbehavior. Even though there are some specific practices that have landed FAANG in hot waters, those aren’t really different from any other companies’ of similar size. Monopolization just happens to be the natural state of any system that has network effects and where all costs are front-loaded (I. e. write the code once, scale to billions of users at, if you squint, zer…
But it is fair to say: this is not only about taxes. This is also about countries gain control over global economy.