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Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

reuters.com

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Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#121

Post by harryh »

kd0amg wrote: post #112
bilekas wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly, it's not a good measure simply to take the profit of 1 year as a guide. They will not be expected to pay this fine each year. Turning over a profit of 9Bn, its still after this fine.. Thats still huge. Given their assets, cash on hand etc. I don't think they will lose much sleep. Anyway they will get away with it. They can afford to.

They will not be expected to pay this fine each year. They will be "expected" to discontinue the behavior the IRS is suing them for. If they do it again, the IRS presumably has cause to sue again.

The lawsuit is not about ongoing behavior, but about the valuation placed on a one time intellectual property sale in 2010.

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#122

Post by throwaway55554 »

iooi wrote: post #110

Doesn't almost every multinational use this arrangement, commonly known as the Double Irish? Why is Facebook getting called out specifically? Surprised the article doesn't mention this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement#Multi...

> Why is Facebook getting called out specifically?

As opposed to rounding them all up at the same time? Maybe it's just easier to go after one at a time?

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#123

Post by bilekas »

kd0amg wrote: post #112
bilekas wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly, it's not a good measure simply to take the profit of 1 year as a guide. They will not be expected to pay this fine each year. Turning over a profit of 9Bn, its still after this fine.. Thats still huge. Given their assets, cash on hand etc. I don't think they will lose much sleep. Anyway they will get away with it. They can afford to.

They will not be expected to pay this fine each year. They will be "expected" to discontinue the behavior the IRS is suing them for. If they do it again, the IRS presumably has cause to sue again.

Don't worry, they fine wont stand. - Get used to be screwed over by companies with more power in the law than you.

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#124

Post by mam2 »

Hamuko wrote: post #117
akerro wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what the point of punishing companies for hiding money in tax heavens is. If they got fined $10M it wouldn't be much newsworthy

Making someone pay the taxes they owe is not a punishment.

making them pay for the crime is though

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#125

Post by paganel »

suifbwish wrote: post #104
ngngngng wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because of the golden rule. He who has the gold, makes the rules.

You are wrong. He who has the guns and the men to use them makes the rules. Gold can be seized, guns must be fought for

> He who has the guns and the men to use them makes the rules.

The good old monopoly of violence. Too bad Max Weber is not in the public discussion as much as he should be, he “guessed” a lot of things too damned right in his “Economy and Society”, imho it is the defining book of our modern society, with Marx’s “Capital” a close second.

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#127

Post by kaliali »

riazrizvi wrote: post #119

Surely this is more about political coercion than tax? Amongst all US companies that offshore profits, including the likes of Halliburton, Facebook has been singled out because the US administration wants the company to do it's bidding regarding policy and algorithms for political advertising? Especially considering all the other political reprisals and pardons that are in the news, following the impeachment acquitta…

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Might as well get $9 Billion to go with it.

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#128

Post by mech1234 »

Hamuko wrote: post #117
akerro wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what the point of punishing companies for hiding money in tax heavens is. If they got fined $10M it wouldn't be much newsworthy

Making someone pay the taxes they owe is not a punishment.

I doubt facebook committed a crime here. The right way to address tax avoidance is to change the law, not to punish companies that comply with the law through arbitrary levels of complexity.

Even if everyone in the room is aware that facebook is practicing avoidance, avoidance is still legal and categorically different than evasion.

Now- The right way to figure out whether this was a crime seems to be by examining the fair value of the intellectual property sold to Facebook's Irish subsidiary. I hope the discussion here can center around this.

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#129

Post by alpha_squared »

iooi wrote: post #110

Doesn't almost every multinational use this arrangement, commonly known as the Double Irish? Why is Facebook getting called out specifically? Surprised the article doesn't mention this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement#Multi...

I recall reading that because of how much the IRS budget has gotten smaller, they have a harder time pursuing many of the larger violations (such as this) which can be very complex to investigate. A consequence of that is when they can pursue something like this, they need to create some big headlines to show the public their value (and hopefully get a budget increase) while keeping other bad actors in check.

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#130

Post by izzydata »

iooi wrote: post #110

Doesn't almost every multinational use this arrangement, commonly known as the Double Irish? Why is Facebook getting called out specifically? Surprised the article doesn't mention this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement#Multi...

You have to start somewhere. It seems like a good choice.
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