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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

#261

Post by JumpCrisscross »

andrewprock wrote: post #258
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> including the likes of Halliburton Halliburton uses a different scheme. Its assets are physically offshore, though there are R&D and depreciation shenanigans (buy out of American profits, depreciate against onshore expenses, and tax the production where it happens). Facebook, on the other hand, claims most of its assets, which are principally intangible, live in Ireland. Its American sub is charged massive licensin…

This literally sounds like apples and apples to me, unless you really think "cloud computing" occurs in space or something. If the servers are in Ireland, then their physical assets are offshore.

> If the servers are in Ireland, then their physical assets are offshore

This is correct. But the fraction of assets which are physical are high for Halliburton and low for Facebook.

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#262

Post by annoyingnoob »

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.

Some of us do not like the dumpster fire and do not warm ourselves with it.

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#263

Post by karatestomp »

m0zg wrote: post #224
dboreham wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typo: fake "investigations" into dossiers.

But the dossier was literally fake, and moreover, paid for by the Clinton campaign.

Is Steele's dossier what we're talking about? What I'm finding squares with my understanding that almost all of it's 1) pretty solidly corroborated, or 2) isn't confirmed but is plausible as supported by surrounding events, often with a lot of smoke-but-no-as-yet-discovered-fire sorts of public info surrounding it. Where's the info so thoroughly discrediting its claims that it makes sense to call the whole thing "fake"? Again, what I'm seeing (normal-ass sites and Wikipedia, not like The Nation or something, if that's a concern) strongly supports pretty much the polar opposite of that, and even a fairly strong refutation of much of that would still leave so much that labelling the whole thing "fake" would be unfair. What's up?

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#264

Post by ahouse101 »

andrewprock wrote: post #258
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> including the likes of Halliburton Halliburton uses a different scheme. Its assets are physically offshore, though there are R&D and depreciation shenanigans (buy out of American profits, depreciate against onshore expenses, and tax the production where it happens). Facebook, on the other hand, claims most of its assets, which are principally intangible, live in Ireland. Its American sub is charged massive licensin…

This literally sounds like apples and apples to me, unless you really think "cloud computing" occurs in space or something. If the servers are in Ireland, then their physical assets are offshore.

Except, the vast majority of Facebook's servers aren't in Ireland. They couldn't be for the platform to work. There is a datacenter in Ireland, but there are 11 datacenters in the US. I guarantee the majority of data and compute power is in those US datacenters.

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#265

Post by ahouse101 »

mc32 wrote: post #200
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?

Twitter has already banned political advertising, and Reddit simply doesn't have the audience that Facebook does (and being a pseudonymous platform is a different paradigm).

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#267

Post by StreamBright »

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…

Are you implying in the US the law is uphold only on political basis?

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#268

Post by ahouse101 »

speleding wrote: post #155
linuxftw wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US administration wants the company to do it's bidding regarding policy and algorithms for political advertising? Unfounded conspiracy theory? Just because they haven't gone after other companies, doesn't mean they shouldn't go after Facebook. They might believe the other companies are guilty but don't have enough evidence to win the trial. Facebook is clearly a US company. Founded and HQ'd in the US, so they shoul…

> 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…

Most of their servers aren't outside the US, though. The majority (not plurality, the majority) of datacenters are here.

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#269

Post by MadWombat »

vertig0h wrote: post #255
jedberg wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The media is supposed to be hostile. They are always hostile to the administration. It is their job as one of the checks on power enshrined in the constitution. Why do you think freedom of the press is in Amendment one?

That's not always the case. The mainstream media - both the news media and entertainment media more broadly - was extremely accommodative and deferential to the Obama administration largely because he was on the mainstream media's political "side". Given this, many actions taken by the Obama administration that would have dominated the news cycle as impeachment-worthy if taken by the Trump administration were simply…

> The mainstream media - both the news media and entertainment media more broadly - was extremely accommodative and deferential to the Obama administration

You don't watch FOX News much, I assume

Re: Facebook tax court trial begins over Ireland offshore deal

#270

Post by harikb »

vertig0h wrote: post #253
ejstronge wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Congress' unprecedented barrage of subpoenas force the administration's hand here. You may find it "absurd", but unprecedented animus requires unprecedented defensive measures. Not sure where in the Constitution this appears...

The administration's use of legal defensive measures is not itself illegal or prohibited by the Constitution.

Claiming that congress doesn't have subpoena powers and everything needs to be taken to Supreme court is not "legal defensive measures". That is the only thing that matters to this sub-thread here. Remember, it is only a while ago that the tables were turned and republicans were happy to claim then President Clinton did not have any powers to defend.
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