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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

#191

Post by Will_Do »

naringas wrote: post #182
complianceowl wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

do you really think that this isn't a case of selective law enforcement? the IRS is famously understaffed, why Facebook? why not Apple? or Amazon? or will they go after them next?? edit: and google?

My guess: Facebook makes an enormous percentage[^1] of its revenue in the US compared to Amazon/Apple. This might make it legally more tricky to argue that its Irish profits are not actually US profits.

Also the IRS would definitely go after Amazon instead if it were politically motivated.

[1]: Can't find absolute numbers but US users have 10x revenue per user: https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average...

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#192

Post by gowld »

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 shouldn't the biggest offender get targeted first?

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#193

Post by wpietri »

dcolkitt wrote: post #142
bilekas wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you as a citizen owe 1000USD, you'll be pursued more. Its completely messed up, but that's the current rules of the system. Without going into politics, they play by the stretched rules.

The chance of an ordinary middle class person being audited by the IRS is extremely low. The enforcement division is severely understaffed, and pretty much only works on computers pattern matching clearly egregious returns. A large proportion of the US population commits some sort of low level tax evasion- unreported income, deductions that never happened, personal expenses as business deductions, claiming dependents…

I would love to see a citation for this: "A large proportion of the US population commits some sort of low level tax evasion".

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#194

Post by AnthonyMouse »

jjoonathan wrote: post #162
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.

Then you'd be judging a lot of people wrongly, because that sort of thing happens all the time for entirely legitimate reasons.

For example, at various points there have been federal tax credits for installing solar panels on your house or buying certain types of green cars. For a lot of people the credit would exceed their federal tax liability for the year. You're prepared to send them all to jail for that without looking at the details?

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#195

Post by naringas »

Will_Do wrote: post #191
naringas wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you really think that this isn't a case of selective law enforcement? the IRS is famously understaffed, why Facebook? why not Apple? or Amazon? or will they go after them next?? edit: and google?

My guess: Facebook makes an enormous percentage[^1] of its revenue in the US compared to Amazon/Apple. This might make it legally more tricky to argue that its Irish profits are not actually US profits. Also the IRS would definitely go after Amazon instead if it were politically motivated. [1]: Can't find absolute numbers but US users have 10x revenue per user: https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-ave…

> Also the IRS would definitely go after Amazon instead if it were politically motivated.

amazon is running computing services for the government, which makes me doubt it.

And what about Google?

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#196

Post by ska »

ksec wrote: post #178
saalweachter wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal precedent is a portion of the law. You -- or in this case, Facebook -- has one interpretation of what is legal, the enforcement agency has another. The court decides and everyone goes forward from there. You and I can have opinion on whether these various international schemes are legal ways to avoid taxes, but ultimately the law going forward will be the precedent set by this case, and its appeals.

There is nothing in the case suggest the international schemes are illegal. Even the IRS is not trying to push for that. "The IRS argues that Facebook understated the value of the intellectual property it sold to an Irish subsidiary in 2010 while building out global operations" That is what IRS is trying to sue, on the ground that Facebook Ireland is now collecting substantially large revenue compare to what it was p…

You latter point doesn't really make sense to me. Isn't it true that a sale of IP should model the value of the IP over its lifetime in some reasonable way? And that would include a growth model for FB, no?

If it could be shown that facebook intentionally undervalued it in order to make this scheme work better for them, wouldn't the IRS have a case?

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#197

Post by pbalau »

mdszy wrote: post #159
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.

It's almost like the expectation that companies pay proper taxes to the countries they exist in IS pretty straight forward.

But really is not, since FB exists in US, UK, Ireland, Israel, France and many other places (see [0]). And not all the value was created in the same place. You could have (and I know examples) a piece of tech being developed in US and not make any money until a team in London picks it up, tweaks the crap out of it and makes some millions. And you need to note that engineers in London are employees of Facebook UK, a different legal entity than Facebook US. Then there are sales and solutions (custom tech built for various customers). The point is, attributing wealth to a particular area is not that clear cut. And I guess this is what this lawsuit is all about, figure out how to do that.

[0] https://www.facebook.com/careers/locations/

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#198

Post by riazrizvi »

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…

I understand that lawyers are taught to think logically and to support their arguments, so I would appreciate your analysis on our exchange, which looks to me like this:

MY COMMENT: question / observation / speculation / hypothesis-with-circumstantial-evidence-to-support-speculation / expectation / expectation

YOUR REPLY: assertion / speculation

question / speculation / assertion

personal observation

question / self-evident-assertion / assertion / assertion

The main complaint to my comment was about unsupported speculation, which I don't see, instead I do see it in the reply. I genuinely want to do better if I should.

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#199

Post by JakeTheAndroid »

naringas wrote: post #182
complianceowl wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

do you really think that this isn't a case of selective law enforcement? the IRS is famously understaffed, why Facebook? why not Apple? or Amazon? or will they go after them next?? edit: and google?

According to Complianceowl, they may also be in the crosshairs (I have no idea myself):

> 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.

But, if this administration does have something to do with targeting Facebook, why would they not go after Amazon if this is politically charged? Trump has been vocal about his hatred of Bezos and Amazon, and his base would love to see it. It would be a fairly safe thing to go after, and honestly even I would have trouble being outraged by it as a non-Trump person.

Also, does the IRS need staff to sue an entity? If they wanted to audit Facebook, sure, they would need staff. But in this case, it's a lawsuit. All you need is lawyers. And since lawyers aren't busy doing IRS audits, they probably have a lot more free time to handle billion dollar lawsuits.

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#200

Post by mc32 »

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…

Don’t you think if it were political they’d go after Twitter or Reddit who are stricter about suspending and banning accounts and so on?
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