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Is there logic behind France’s rumored €1 Billion Google Tax?

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Re: Is there logic behind France’s rumored €1 Billion Google Tax?

#3
The article is not replete on details on how this supposed tax would work. Personally, I'm in favour of taxing Internet companies, but I believe tackling such a complex issue affecting many countries on a national level is a mistake.

Disclaimer: I'm French too.

Re: Is there logic behind France’s rumored €1 Billion Google Tax?

#4

The article is not replete on details on how this supposed tax would work. Personally, I'm in favour of taxing Internet companies, but I believe tackling such a complex issue affecting many countries on a national level is a mistake. Disclaimer: I'm French too.

Personally, I'm in favour of taxing Internet companies

Why?

EDIT: I was just curious to hear more.

Re: Is there logic behind France’s rumored €1 Billion Google Tax?

#5
I had to kind of laugh at the seeming distress expressed in the article the Google merely passed on the taxes to the consumer, as in who do politicians and journalist think pay all taxes? Business taxes are merely an indirect means of taxation on the populace, it is done to fool the general population into believing someone else carries the load.

Re: Is there logic behind France’s rumored €1 Billion Google Tax?

#6

The article is not replete on details on how this supposed tax would work. Personally, I'm in favour of taxing Internet companies, but I believe tackling such a complex issue affecting many countries on a national level is a mistake. Disclaimer: I'm French too.

Personally, I'm in favour of taxing Internet companies Why? EDIT: I was just curious to hear more.

Why you saying Why should Internet companies be taxed? Or Why should taxes exist at all?

Re: Is there logic behind France’s rumored €1 Billion Google Tax?

#7

The article is not replete on details on how this supposed tax would work. Personally, I'm in favour of taxing Internet companies, but I believe tackling such a complex issue affecting many countries on a national level is a mistake. Disclaimer: I'm French too.

> I believe tackling such a complex issue affecting many countries on a national level is a mistake.

This sounds like the main problem here, to me:

EU law makes it easy for a company to do business anywhere in EU and only pay taxes in its headquarters, on the assumption that it doesn't matter a lot where the company pays its taxes as long as it's inside the EU. But at the same time, EU law doesn't regulate corporate tax, so some countries can easily take advantage of that by lowering them (or completely removing them) so companies will be attracted there.

They are basically living as parasites to the other countries, and the only solution to that seems to be harmonizing taxes accross the EU.

Edit: could you explain the downvote a bit? I'm curious to hear what you don't like in what I said.

Re: Is there logic behind France’s rumored €1 Billion Google Tax?

#8

The article is not replete on details on how this supposed tax would work. Personally, I'm in favour of taxing Internet companies, but I believe tackling such a complex issue affecting many countries on a national level is a mistake. Disclaimer: I'm French too.

Personally, I'm in favour of taxing Internet companies Why? EDIT: I was just curious to hear more.

Why shouldn't they pay their fair share? Normal companies who make profits get taxed. Giant companies funnel their profits through Holland and Ireland, and pay a paltry amount.

Back in the days, the nobility had also exempted itself from taxes. I see no reason for this state of affairs to continue.

Re: Is there logic behind France’s rumored €1 Billion Google Tax?

#9

The article is not replete on details on how this supposed tax would work. Personally, I'm in favour of taxing Internet companies, but I believe tackling such a complex issue affecting many countries on a national level is a mistake. Disclaimer: I'm French too.

The rumor is not replete with how the proposed tax would work either; however, previous indications of similarly proposed taxes would suggest a tiered tax level based on different types of User data (more sensitive vs less sensitive) are stored in different tiers (France/National, Europe/Federal, and outside of Europe), with wavering amounts of taxes on a, I imagine, per user level.

Re: Is there logic behind France’s rumored €1 Billion Google Tax?

#10
Maybe this kind of taxation could be a way of coping with NSA surveillance of European citizens? (That's just a provocative sentence, so please keep on reading.) Currently, Europe is at data disadvantage comparing with USA, and this disadvantage is used by USA not only for security reasons, but also to protect interests of USA. (That's what Snowden claims himself.) In such case, shouldn't Europe also protect its interests? I think the only two ways out are:

1. Imposing taxation on foreign Internet giants in Europe. Needless to say, that would lead to divisions of the Internet, which we all want to avoid.

2. There should be an international act signed between Europe and USA providing Internet companies certain degree of independence from national-level surveillance, which would protect privacy of citizens of each country involved in the act to the same extent.

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