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Leaked Documents Expose Global Companies’ Secret Tax Deals in Luxembourg

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31–40 of 75 posts

Re: Leaked Documents Expose Global Companies’ Secret Tax Deals in Luxembourg

#31
post #19

Anyone got any ideas on how governments could effectively clamp down on this? In Australia, IKEA paid 1%* tax over the last 12 years, even as sales surged 500%: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/06/luxembourg-tax-... (The Guardian article has since removed the 1% reference, though it was in there when I first read the article.)

I would understand how small countries would have a hard time dealing with big corps but could not a big country just tell them to close shop and go elsewhere if it deems them to be evading taxes? Probably some kind of FTA forbids his but in principle it should work, shouldn't it? After all countries are supposed to be sovereign entities.

Problem is, in regard of European laws, you can't tell them to fuck off if they are not doing anything unlawful. And here it is the case, they exploit a hole in the law which allows to create subsidiaries in Luxembourg through which the French/German/whatever company is paying the products it sells.

Re: Leaked Documents Expose Global Companies’ Secret Tax Deals in Luxembourg

#32
post #12
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The image you are talking about appears to be: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25012939@N03/4196459317 on that image it says: "Some rights reserved" and when you click through you are taken to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ So, it appears you have the photograph available on the Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic Creative Commons license. The original story using your picture is attributing it to you. S…

Actually, wouldn't the story have to be licensed under the same license to satisfy the terms? Is it?

You must be thinking GPL licensing?

Re: Leaked Documents Expose Global Companies’ Secret Tax Deals in Luxembourg

#33
post #19

Anyone got any ideas on how governments could effectively clamp down on this? In Australia, IKEA paid 1%* tax over the last 12 years, even as sales surged 500%: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/06/luxembourg-tax-... (The Guardian article has since removed the 1% reference, though it was in there when I first read the article.)

I'm not saying I condone it (I especially don't like the part of routing all of your profits made in other countries through a single country with lower taxes, and don't think it's fair) - but maybe there's an argument to be made about low income tax for corporations, if that actually leads to much higher sales (on which consumers pay VAT, so tax money still goes to the government)?

Re: Leaked Documents Expose Global Companies’ Secret Tax Deals in Luxembourg

#34
post #19

Anyone got any ideas on how governments could effectively clamp down on this? In Australia, IKEA paid 1%* tax over the last 12 years, even as sales surged 500%: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/06/luxembourg-tax-... (The Guardian article has since removed the 1% reference, though it was in there when I first read the article.)

I'm not saying I condone it (I especially don't like the part of routing all of your profits made in other countries through a single country with lower taxes, and don't think it's fair) - but maybe there's an argument to be made about low income tax for corporations, if that actually leads to much higher sales (on which consumers pay VAT, so tax money still goes to the government)?

Lower tax rates, and simpler tax rules, often lead to higher revenues. Make it easy to comply with the rules, set reasonable rates, and companies may find it easier to deal with than setting up shell offices in another country and employing teams of accountants and lawyers and bankers to shuffle the money around.

Re: Leaked Documents Expose Global Companies’ Secret Tax Deals in Luxembourg

#36
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not American and don't live in America, so I guess you need to rethink that bit. Companies are clearly not people. If they were, they wouldn't be able to go jurisdictional shopping so easily. Taxation without representation is pretty widely recognised as problematic though. Not for nothing did it help trigger the war of independence against in the colonies against the British. Think about it: if you can't influen…

> Taxation without representation is pretty widely recognised as problematic though. Obviously, but here we're talking about people having no representation - not companies. > "if you want to sell to our citizens, you have to pay us lots of tax" No country that I know of demands "lots of tax". Usually, they just want to receive their "fair" share of tax - e.g. 20% on the profits on the products sold in the country/to…

I don't see such a huge distinction between people and companies as you do. Companies are just groups of people working together. They aren't totally alien things.

Governments always claim that their tax is "fair", that doesn't mean anything. We have to evaluate fairness ourselves. In this case, what does "fair" mean? People tolerate taxation because they get something back from it. That's it - that's the only reason. It's not because politicians or governments have some natural right to exist, it's because the benefits outweigh the costs (again, in theory, ignoring that no government is even close to perfectly representative).

But what benefits do companies get from the tax they pay? The answer is, very few and nothing on the scale as what people get. Companies don't use roads or schools or hospitals, their employees use those and they already pay tax. Companies can use the courts, but they usually have to pay for that at the point of use, they don't qualify for legal aid or anything like that. They can also benefit from things like copyrights or patents, except these days at least in the tech sector patents seem more of a cost than a benefit. I'd happily opt my company out of that "benefit" if I could. They certainly are not immortal, companies go bust all the time.

Meanwhile, people that can't afford to play the game and make deals with Luxembourg can easily lose out badly in your so-called fair world. A few people form a company and start selling some products. 20% of the sale price goes to the government where the customer was based. But then, in the absence of double taxation treaties, the government where the company is based (if there is a single such place) would take another 20%. Then when the company actually pays the people who did the work, those governments might take another 20-40%.

0.8 * 0.8 * 0.7 (let's say 30% personal income tax) == 0.448, in other words you ended up losing most of the money you earned just to corporation and personal income tax. That's before including things like employment taxes, taxes on property and so on.

This provides a powerful incentive to simply not sell to other countries at all, and this makes everyone poorer. Which is why there are double taxation treaties. But once you have those, you have to accept that other countries will have different opinions about tax and different needs, and trying to slice up the cake will inevitably result in big fights and compromises.

Re: Leaked Documents Expose Global Companies’ Secret Tax Deals in Luxembourg

#38
post #19

Anyone got any ideas on how governments could effectively clamp down on this? In Australia, IKEA paid 1%* tax over the last 12 years, even as sales surged 500%: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/06/luxembourg-tax-... (The Guardian article has since removed the 1% reference, though it was in there when I first read the article.)

First you need to communicate this to the public and show that the problem is only going to get worse, as globalization allows more and more elaborate schemes like this. This will justify lowering corporate taxes, or establishing official authorities that will negotiate special tax deals with companies. In short, what luxembourg is doing, all big countries will be doing soon as well.

Re: Leaked Documents Expose Global Companies’ Secret Tax Deals in Luxembourg

#39
post #19

Anyone got any ideas on how governments could effectively clamp down on this? In Australia, IKEA paid 1%* tax over the last 12 years, even as sales surged 500%: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/06/luxembourg-tax-... (The Guardian article has since removed the 1% reference, though it was in there when I first read the article.)

I'm not saying I condone it (I especially don't like the part of routing all of your profits made in other countries through a single country with lower taxes, and don't think it's fair) - but maybe there's an argument to be made about low income tax for corporations, if that actually leads to much higher sales (on which consumers pay VAT, so tax money still goes to the government)?

The quesution is.... and what about small businesses? Why should they be treated differently than corps?

Re: Leaked Documents Expose Global Companies’ Secret Tax Deals in Luxembourg

#40
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would understand how small countries would have a hard time dealing with big corps but could not a big country just tell them to close shop and go elsewhere if it deems them to be evading taxes? Probably some kind of FTA forbids his but in principle it should work, shouldn't it? After all countries are supposed to be sovereign entities.

Problem is, in regard of European laws, you can't tell them to fuck off if they are not doing anything unlawful. And here it is the case, they exploit a hole in the law which allows to create subsidiaries in Luxembourg through which the French/German/whatever company is paying the products it sells.

The hole in the law is not really a hole, it's designed to work like that.

The EU single market was created to simplify trade across borders in Europe, because that makes everyone wealthier. Imagine if every country had to make everything itself!

Tax is a big part of what makes trade complicated. If you had to file taxes in dozens of different languages, dozens of times, each year to every EU country, it'd be much harder to sell across the single market. So the EU does not require that, you can incorporate once and sell to the whole market. That means, you get to pick where in the EU you incorporate, and as different regions have different levels of taxation .... well, it's no different to freedom of movement for individuals. They can go live somewhere with lower taxes if they want to. The places they didn't choose to live might not like that, but you can't have both simplicity and every government getting to tax everyone else.

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