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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

#161

Post by jakemal »

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…

Does the US administration have the authority over the IRS to file and pull the suits at their will?

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#162

Post by jjoonathan »

sixhobbits wrote: post #137

People looking at their personal income tax return: Woah, this is more complicated than I expected - should probably pay a professional accountant to sort this out for me People reading news articles like this: Look at these stupid professionals arguing about how international tax law in the $XB range when one side is so obviously wrong, and the correct outcome is really straight forward.

If a professional accountant told my buddy to do one weird trick to completely eliminate the lion's share of his tax liability, and he did it, and then the IRS went after him, I'd feel entirely comfortable judging both my buddy and his accountant, even if I didn't know the precise details.

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#163

Post by Mirioron »

rtkwe wrote: post #139
mech1234 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

I think there's room to argue that intentionally shipping all your IP to a lower tax country then charging the main company (that developed that IP in the first place) high fees to use that IP as a way to shift profits from higher tax areas to lower tax areas could constitute fraud. Either they sold/transferred the IP for way to little or they're charging themselves way too much because it's advantageous for taxes.

Here's the million/billion/trillion dollar question: how much is a brand worth? Clearly it is worth something. Facebook can do the most inane thing, but if they put their brand on it then it will have some value.

To me this is the flaw in corporate taxation. I don't think you can ever work around this as long as you allow free trade. It just makes sense to tax them in other ways instead and perhaps simply get rid of corporate taxation itself.

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#164

Post by Mirioron »

saiya-jin wrote: post #103
alehul wrote: post #92

To those mentioning that Facebook's revenue is $70b: their net income is only around ~$18b. This would be half of Facebook's net income for an entire year, which is substantial. It's a big deal to them.

Well it should be. There are public services not being provided/underfunded because of those unpaid taxes. Considering main revenue stream of FB, there is hardly anybody here being sad about this. In a similar vein when a rogue multinational bank is fined up to a yearly profit for some dirty shit, and people celebrate.

Facebook might have decided to simply do less business, because the risk wasn't acceptable with the taxes added. When the cost of doing business is higher then less business is done.

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#165

Post by Mirioron »

caconym_ wrote: post #145
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...

Regardless of any particular politics, they seem like a politically expedient target. Everybody hates them (while using their products, which is funny), and they aren't a big government contractor.

On the other hand, if this is done for political purposes with demands, then Facebook's problem will go away when they capitulate. That will mean that they can continue doing what they were doing. If they're actually guilty then they should be punished.

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#166

Post by sp332 »

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…

It was started under the last administration. After going for four years, it's a bit late to "quietly disappear". https://money.cnn.com/2016/07/29/technology/facebook-irs-pen...

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#168

Post by speleding »

raiyu wrote: post #158
speleding wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook is clearly a US company. Founded and HQ'd in the US, so they should be paying US taxes. If most of the advertisers are outside the US, most of the users are outside the US, and most of the servers are outside the US, I think you will agree that it's not reasonable to say ALL of the profit should be taxed in the US. Which part of the profit should go where is an endless debate among pundits, politicians and…

Except Facebook makes most of its money from US users not from international users. Also hard to argue that their campus that houses the majority of their employees in the US isn’t the one generating the IP.

> Except Facebook makes most of its money from US users not from international users.

Source? 96.75% of the world population is outside the US, of Facebook users it will be a smaller percentage, but it seems highly unlikely that most of the revenue will come from such a narrow base.

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#169

Post by krtong »

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…

i disagree on pretty much every underlying supposition here: the tax evasion whataboutism, “why facebook when everybody evades taxes?” US allowing these other companies to offshore profits, as if the IRS has the ability to, at any point, ask for that money back; The government having any use for the facebook; facebook being capable of coercion/ memes and advertising having any effect on the way people vote.

We know people read what they want into political media. the content may affect your experience on facebook but Facebook has not been proven to have any effect on the ballots.

Facebook was probably caught in the act. IRS probably found some legal loophole to actually sue facebook and has not yet found one for google, etc. whats more important to the irs? Getting facebook to change its content policies which would have zero effect on this upcoming election given everyone already knows how theyre going to vote, or 9 billion dollars?

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#170

Post by davidw »

complianceowl wrote: post #157
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…

A lot of unfounded speculation in your comment. It seems more politically-motivated than rooted in facts. Secondly, have you done your research? Surely Facebook is not the only company being targeted by the government right now. I can assure you that, surely there are more. Thirdly, as much as I might dislike an administration, I won't take the giant, speculative leap as to assume that I know exactly what they're thi…

Good comment, and good way of looking at things.

However, currently it's not possible to obtain a lot of facts about the inner workings of this administration, since it is effectively above the law in terms of things like subpoenas.

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