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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

#221

Post by [deleted] »

thu2111 wrote: post #206
bb123 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry if this is a misunderstanding but I thought you pay tax where you do business. So Facebook should be tax on profits generated in the UK - but they play with their corporate structures to make it look like they aren't actually doing any trade here.

Governments generally tax everything they can think of. So there are many different taxes and Facebook pays them all. There's VAT, which is essentially passed through to their customers but the seller collects it. There's employment, local government taxes. Facebook pays those because it has workers in the country. There's corporation taxes, which are taxes on corporate profits. Facebook pays some of these because te…

[deleted]

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

#222

Post by gman83 »

thu2111 wrote: post #196
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 a…

This isn't how it works at all:

> All countries tax income earned by multinational corporations within their borders. The United States also imposes a minimum tax on the income US-based multinationals earn in low-tax foreign countries, with a credit for 80 percent of foreign income taxes they’ve paid. Most other countries exempt most foreign-source income of their multinationals.

https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-does-curre...

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

#223

Post by HelloMcFly »

throwGuardian wrote: post #202

Let's take a moment to savor the irony here - Donald Trump is leading a charge to stop unfair taxation of American tech companies abroad, while they openly work to get him out of office by any means necessary.

Facebook is definitely not try to get Trump out of office.

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

#224

Post by codedokode »

ericmay wrote: post #212
bb123 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry if this is a misunderstanding but I thought you pay tax where you do business. So Facebook should be tax on profits generated in the UK - but they play with their corporate structures to make it look like they aren't actually doing any trade here.

A couple of points: 1) If you pay tax where you do business do you pay tax on global profits there? For example, France’s new law taxes 3% of global revenue if you do more than €28m in business in the country. Should it be taxed on 3% of global revenue or on the exact amount of business it does in France? 2) If BMW sells a car in the US, do we tax BMW global for doing business in the US at the 21% tax rate? “ The lev…

> If BMW sells a car in the US

Aren't there import tariffs and sales tax in US?

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

#225

Post by JeremyNT »

solarhoma wrote: post #81
ixtis7 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China, perhaps. Russia is in the doldrums. The 'problem' with China is that it's an ethnostate, or wants to be. So in a practical sense most Westerners are better off fixing their allegiances to the US, for better or worse. At least then you can be part of the apparatus and not pre-emptively sidelined. I like some aspects of China vs. the US too, but China is for the Chinese , as they say.

Americans (and Europeans) are very used to the idea that no matter your race or creed you can be just as American as anyone else. We many times forget that not every country in the world acts this way. China being one of them.

I almost did a spit take there. America's short history includes genocide, enslavement, de facto disenfranchisement, economic discrimination, and/or dramatically unequal jurisprudence levied against basically all non-Europeans.

You could say that this is somehow improved since the civil rights movement, and you'd be right, but its legacy as a de-facto patriarchal ethnostate looms large to this day and if this is the beacon of inclusion and harmony that the rest of the world aspires to that's a sorry situation indeed. The US line of "all men are created equal" should have come with a footnote explaining that "some are more equal than others."

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

#226

Post by hef19898 »

sbacic wrote: post #120

I have been seeing these headlines more and more lately and I have a nagging suspicion that somebody is pushing an agenda. What exactly that agenda is remains to be seen. As for the news article you mentioned, it should be noted that the £28m is corporate tax, not _all_ the taxes. I'm reasonably sure that FAANG is not shirking the government on VAT or payroll taxes. As for why they pay so little corporate tax, I'd gu…

Amazon's EU headquarter is in Luxemburg, Amazon EU S.a.r.l. Then you have Apple in Dublin. At that is without all the other legal entities FAANG has in the EU. And within the EU, optimizing tax is an art. For some time there was a thing called the double Irish (with some Dutch included if I remember well). Every large enough company is doing this. But saying all of of FAANGs cost centers are in the US is factually wrong.

EDIT: Comment below explained the double Irish way better!

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

#227

Post by hatracksat »

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%.

Maybe the UK and the rest of Europe wouldn't be so bad at building businesses if they stopped taxing revenue and focused on profits instead. I'm not complaining as an American since it keeps them dependant on our services but it seems silly. It's like they hate the idea of succeeding.

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

#228

Post by sbacic »

hef19898 wrote: post #226
sbacic wrote: post #120

I have been seeing these headlines more and more lately and I have a nagging suspicion that somebody is pushing an agenda. What exactly that agenda is remains to be seen. As for the news article you mentioned, it should be noted that the £28m is corporate tax, not _all_ the taxes. I'm reasonably sure that FAANG is not shirking the government on VAT or payroll taxes. As for why they pay so little corporate tax, I'd gu…

Amazon's EU headquarter is in Luxemburg, Amazon EU S.a.r.l. Then you have Apple in Dublin. At that is without all the other legal entities FAANG has in the EU. And within the EU, optimizing tax is an art. For some time there was a thing called the double Irish (with some Dutch included if I remember well). Every large enough company is doing this. But saying all of of FAANGs cost centers are in the US is factually wr…

That doesn't make any of them European companies per se - their main HQs are still in the US, correct?

> But saying all of of FAANGs cost centers are in the US is factually wrong.

Care to shed some light on this? What exactly does FAANG develop in the EU? And why?

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

#229

Post by ghaff »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #152
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want my fire engines used to protect someone's property who isn't paying to support them.

I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic or not, but somebody owns that property and is paying income or capital gains on any realized profit.

And is probably paying property taxes which are the specific tax paying for the fire engine in a lot of US jurisdictions.

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

#230

Post by pirocks »

ixtis7 wrote: post #154
lexs wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might not have children but you do benefit from other people having children, just because you don't "take" as much as you're paying doesn't mean you don't indirectly benefit from the effects it has on society.

Sure, I agree, but it's hard to imagine the multiplier for the 'externalities' is 2x or greater. Singapore is not some horrific hellscape where I couldn't live as I do here. Nor is Hong Kong (present situation there not being due to lack of tax revenue). They're educated (perhaps even better than in the UK), healthcare would be accessible to me, infrastructure is good. Heck, Singapore even has a massive public housin…

There is a belief among many that the current situation in Hong Kong is caused by the housing situation in Hong Kong. Part of why taxes are so low in Hong Kong is that the government profits from the housing situation(by owning most of the land and/or having arrangements with those who own all the land).

Additionally your two examples are both high density countries, and may not generalize to a country like the UK. Also worth noting that these countries give up a fair bit in civil liberties.

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