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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?

#11

Post by charlysisto »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #4
mercurial wrote: post #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.

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

It's not about internet companies, it's about a set of multinational companies (amazon, starbuck, McDonald & many others including non-US) using a set of legal fiscal tricks to pay a ridicule amount of taxes compared to the national based ones & individuals. It's hurting competition and feeding the increasingly wide gap between wages & company income.

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

#12

Post by DanBC »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #4
mercurial wrote: post #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.

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

Google does a lot of business in the UK. I can buy, with real English money products from Google employees in an Enish Google office. For them to include a token step at the end of that process (invisible to the user) of having a Google employee in the Irish Google office just so they can avoid paying the English corporation tax is shady.

Google quasi-legally avoids a huge amount of tax. Everyone accepts that reducing your tax burden is legitimate, but there comes a point when it is taking the piss.

Paying tax is part of being a member of society. People and corporations not wanting to pay any tax should not be able to claim the benefits tha result from that tax burden. Google benefits from UK education. Google should fucking pay for it.

The scary thing is that Google isn't that bad compared to other companies. The scale is huge but the techniques are run of the mill. See some of the water companies who have baffling corporate structures and who use international intra-business loans in order to avoid corporation tax, all while paying massive bonuses to staff, increasing costs to consumers, under funding maintainance, etc. it's infuriating.

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

#13

Post by davidw »

mercurial wrote: post #8
sillysaurus2 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So the solution is for .nl and .ie to close their loopholes, not create new taxes, no?

They recently passed a similar tax in Italy, and the whole thing was about how the big bad American companies are making money and not investing in Italy. This, at the same time Fiat is decamping from Italy because the business climate is so shitty. So what's their creative answer to improve things? Another tax!

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

#14

Post by lepouet »

The problem for Google which might cost them 1 Billion is that they say that all sales to french customers are done in Ireland but in the same time Google has 100+ employees in france whith title like "sales manager" who talks about theirs "clients" in internal emails.

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

#15

Post by davidw »

seszett wrote: post #7
mercurial wrote: post #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.

> 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…

> so some countries can easily take advantage of that by lowering them (or completely removing them) so companies will be attracted there.

God forbid anyone try and make a country a good place to do business.

I'm for closing the various loopholes, because big companies should have to pay the same taxes that smaller companies do. But I am also very much in favor or countries trying to compete and improve in order to attract business.

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

You call other countries who don't want to import the crappy, unfriendly business climate of countries like France or Italy (where I live) "parasites".

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

#16

Post by adaml_623 »

Shivetya wrote: post #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.

Yes and no. The services that Google provides are already priced at the supply/demand meeting point. Tax is merely reducing profits that are already made.

Google is not going to insist on making X% net profit and will not put up it's rates just because a tax rate changes.

You can't pretend that Google dropped their rates in the UK by a few percent when the corporate tax rates dropped last year?

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

#17

Post by doe88 »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #4
mercurial wrote: post #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.

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

Because if you make some business in one country it's fair to proportionally contribute to that country. And hiding behind schemes in order to minimize it should be prohibited.

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

#18

Post by nl »

davidw wrote: post #13
mercurial wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So the solution is for .nl and .ie to close their loopholes, not create new taxes, no? They recently passed a similar tax in Italy, and the whole thing was about how the big bad American companies are making money and not investing in Italy. This, at the same time Fiat is decamping from Italy because the business climate is so shitty. So what's their creative answer to improve things? Another tax!

So the solution is for .nl and .ie to close their loopholes, not create new taxes, no?

.ie is the loophole, most of the time.

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

#19

Post by louhike »

Doublon wrote: post #2

The answer is "no". Disclaimer: I'm French.

The fact that you are french does not make your opinion meaningfull without any explanation on why you disagree with this tax. Please, explain us why or do not leave this kind of comments.

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

#20

Post by yodsanklai »

Shivetya wrote: post #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.

Can you elaborate? how google being taxed has an impact on my own income?
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