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Spain planning on going ahead with ‘Google tax’ despite US tariff threats

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Re: Spain planning on going ahead with ‘Google tax’ despite US tariff threats

#191

Post by AnthonyMouse »

gamblor956 wrote: post #176
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like the obvious solution, make up the difference by taxing dividends and capital gains as if they were income. I'm pretty sure this is where we will end up anyway, there seems to be a race to the bottom. It's much harder to move your family offshore to avoid tax than it is to move your profits offshore.

This is how capital gains and dividends used to be taxed... The capital gains preference is a relatively recent development in the tax world.

Capital gains is weird because there are several different ways to justify the lower rate, but then how it's calculated should differ.

For example, if you bought a lump of silver thirty years ago and sell it today, the nominal price is higher, but that's basically just a result of inflation. Shouldn't we be taxing the real gain and not the inflation? But in that case maybe instead of a lower capital gains rate we should only adjust the gains for inflation and then apply the normal rate.

Then you have the double taxation argument, but in that case you should either just get rid of the double taxation or dividends should be treated the same way.

And there are several others, but what they all amount to is that the lower rate is a bad hack and we would be better off in each case to account for the thing that needs adjusting directly instead.

Re: Spain planning on going ahead with ‘Google tax’ despite US tariff threats

#192

Post by bluecalm »

the-dude wrote: post #42
bluecalm wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to pay the VAT when you sell to EU even if you don't have presence in EU. Google pays that. The fuss is about some countries wanting more than that.

The customer pays the VAT. Google collects it and returns it to the government.

It's a moot point who "pays". The tax is added to the transaction which means less profit for the company. I pay VAT. I can sell my product for X. Just because I need to add VAT doesn't mean I can magically sell for X +23% because people wouldn't buy it. The price is set by demand/supply. Paying VAT means the company makes less profit.

I send the VAT money to my government every month. If I didn't have to do that it would be my profit. "The customer pays" rhetoric doesn't hold water. Customers don't care how much of the price is the tax. They make their buying decision based on sticker value.

Re: Spain planning on going ahead with ‘Google tax’ despite US tariff threats

#193

Post by oblio »

stevehawk wrote: post #157
dangerface wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europeans like me like America because they are very vocal about freedom and liberty but we are waking up to the reality that it's all talk. The USA behaves like Russia and China, they spy on foreigners, influence their elections, start unjustified wars for oil and generally have a very low regard for freedom and liberty outside of their soil. USA are not the good guys and Russia and China are not the bad guys they a…

> The USA behaves like Russia and China, they spy on foreigners, influence their elections, start unjustified wars for oil and generally have a very low regard for freedom and liberty outside of their soil. I'm sorry, but which of those do European nations not engage in as well?

Almost any European country that's not France, the UK or Russia.

Re: Spain planning on going ahead with ‘Google tax’ despite US tariff threats

#194

Post by squiggleblaz »

pengstrom wrote: post #163
solarhoma wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you speaking of foreign citizens illegally gaining access to the United States? Which are placed in camps (call them concentration camps if you will but they in no way resemble what China is doing to the Uyghurs, i.e. a true concentration camp). And once in these camps they are processed for asylum, refugee status, etc? Yes, they may be stuck in these ‘horrifying’ camps which is not where they want to be. But the…

Just because they're not as bad as China doesn't mean they're not horrendous. I mean, families are separated! How can you defend such a system? The USA is very rich, and has the means to provide a dignified process. I mean, you're a country of mostly immigrant-descendants, right?

Where are you from, that your hands are lily white? Trying to say that the US is equivalent to China because they both have concentration camps is completely ridiculous.

Even the children of illegal immigrants with unpopular religions in the US will have the legal and right to contribute to future US policies. China's treatment of the Uyghur and US treatment of illegal immigrants are both immoral, but they aren't by any means the same.

Re: Spain planning on going ahead with ‘Google tax’ despite US tariff threats

#195

Post by ddalex »

seibelj wrote: post #82

IMO the corporate tax rate should be zero, and then everyone would be on the same playing field. Right now the only companies that pay taxes are small ones without the resources and staff to get around it. With 0% corporate tax, all of these games and shenanigans would end. Also, corporate profits are double-taxed anyway, as taxes are paid once on profits then again as dividends / capital gains by the shareholders. T…

Agreed with the need to have a uniform corporate tax, but not 0 - it must be higher than personal tax, otherwise you just create a new loophole.

I'd say either 20% or profit or 2% of turnover, whichever is higher. Before dividends and stock buybacks.

The corporations need to sustain the social infrastructure that made them possible in the first place.

Re: Spain planning on going ahead with ‘Google tax’ despite US tariff threats

#196

Post by thu2111 »

tim333 wrote: post #71

I'm not sure of the details of Spain's proposal but something needs to be done really to make taxation more fair. At the moment you get headlines like "Facebook paid just £28m tax after record £1.6bn revenues in UK" because they fiddle it with offshore tax havens while normal UK businesses have to pay more like 30% of their income in tax, not 1.7%.

normal UK businesses have to pay more like 30% of their income in tax

UK corporation tax rate is 19%.

USA corporation tax rate is 21%. Pushed down partly due to low tax competition from the rest of the world, i.e. places like the UK.

Facebook pay little corporation tax in the UK because it isn't a British company. It's an American company. It was created in America. Most of its employees are there. Its headquarters are there.

The EU works the same way. Corporate taxes are levied where the company is headquartered. It's arbitrary but all other ways to try and divvy up something inherently multi-national are even more arbitrary.

I am British myself and I really don't understand why my fellow Brits have such a hard time understanding this - foreign companies pay little UK tax on profits because they are foreign. They were not made in Britain. If Facebook had been formed in the UK then for sure, most of its corporation tax would be paid to the Exchequer. But unfortunately it wasn't.

Re: Spain planning on going ahead with ‘Google tax’ despite US tariff threats

#197

Post by thu2111 »

orbifold wrote: post #83
matthewowen wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was a comment about the UK no longer being a member of the EU soon (we shall see).

In fact rumor has it that a major reason for the Brexit campaign was that there was a threat of very costly corporate tax loopholes being closed in new EU wide legislation.

That rumour isn't accurate. The origins of the Brexit campaign are well documented and understood, tax doesn't feature in it. It came out of the rise of UKIP who campaigned primarily on immigration and sovereignty, with the two being intertwined because, immigration was said to be high due to the EU forbidding any controls on intra-EU migration. That rise combined with long term Tory euroscepticism pushed Cameron to promise a referendum to win over UKIP voters, a promise he made good on, and then the Remain campaign lost.

Re: Spain planning on going ahead with ‘Google tax’ despite US tariff threats

#198

Post by pjc50 »

sbacic wrote: post #185
pjc50 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we really do mean a "general anti-avoidance rule" (GAAR e.g. https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/tax-avoidance-gene... ), because otherwise you end up in an endless loop of adjusting the rules against moving targets. GAARs ultimately boil down to the question of "did you do this rather than a more obvious transaction structure simply to pay less tax", a sort of Occam's razor. > dangerous the idea of somebod…

> GAARs ultimately boil down to the question of "did you do this rather than a more obvious transaction structure simply to pay less tax", a sort of Occam's razor. Okay, so it is a "just trust us" system of deciding who is breaking the law and who isn't. In that case, I'll gladly take multinationals not paying taxes over some government official arbitrarily deciding that I am avoiding taxes and should be punished. Ev…

It is not arbitrary. If you're in a corrupt system, you're vulnerable even if you have followed the rules. GAAR systems generally have a set of best practices, and if you disagree with the result you have access to the court system (not "a government official") to work it out.

Re: Spain planning on going ahead with ‘Google tax’ despite US tariff threats

#199

Post by [deleted] »

pengstrom wrote: post #163
solarhoma wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you speaking of foreign citizens illegally gaining access to the United States? Which are placed in camps (call them concentration camps if you will but they in no way resemble what China is doing to the Uyghurs, i.e. a true concentration camp). And once in these camps they are processed for asylum, refugee status, etc? Yes, they may be stuck in these ‘horrifying’ camps which is not where they want to be. But the…

Just because they're not as bad as China doesn't mean they're not horrendous. I mean, families are separated! How can you defend such a system? The USA is very rich, and has the means to provide a dignified process. I mean, you're a country of mostly immigrant-descendants, right?

[deleted]

Re: Spain planning on going ahead with ‘Google tax’ despite US tariff threats

#200

Post by thu2111 »

AshwinDurairaj wrote: post #72

An honest question - What outcomes would there be if countries like Spain decide one day to impose exorbant taxes, like those totalling $1b annually for Google? Would it just be cheaper for these companies to pull out? And what international recourse would happen?

For Spain? Surely yes. Google have no major engineering presence in Spain.

We saw this happen already when Spain tried to force Google to pay taxes on link clicks in Google News. The outcome was they shut News down entirely.

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