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Facebook agrees to pay France €106M in back taxes

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Facebook agrees to pay France €106M in back taxes

#4

Post by smabie »

adventured wrote: post #2

Let me just check. $27.9 billion in operating income the prior four quarters. $58.2 billion in cash. It appears they will be able to afford the taxes.

I don't think anyone was the under the impression that they would be unable to afford the taxes.

Re: Facebook agrees to pay France €106M in back taxes

#6

Post by tareqak »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #3
adventured wrote: post #2

Let me just check. $27.9 billion in operating income the prior four quarters. $58.2 billion in cash. It appears they will be able to afford the taxes.

About a Euro and a half per French citizen. Good on France...

> Facebook has agreed to pay the French government €106m (£95.7m) in back taxes to settle a dispute over revenues earned in the country.

>

> The payment covers the last decade of its French operations from 2009.

For the last 10 years

Re: Facebook agrees to pay France €106M in back taxes

#7

Post by throwawaynothx »

syoussry wrote: post #5

As a French citizen, I also "agreed" to pay my taxes last year :). I even paid the full amount I was being claimed. How generous of me.

Just curious, if you don't pay your taxes for 10 years as a citizen what happens? do you get arrested at some point?

Re: Facebook agrees to pay France €106M in back taxes

#8

Post by sukilot »

syoussry wrote: post #5

As a French citizen, I also "agreed" to pay my taxes last year :). I even paid the full amount I was being claimed. How generous of me.

Facebook also plays the full amount it claims.

The issue is that there was an ambiguity in the law that was recently discussed and resolved.

Re: Facebook agrees to pay France €106M in back taxes

#9

Post by 0xy »

Here's an interesting truth that many of you might not know. When you're a large multinational company or a very high net worth individual, then taxes aren't really an objective calculation.

The tax code in most countries, despite being tens of thousands of pages of legalese, are extremely subjective. This subjective and loose language allow for innumerable loopholes and tax dodges.

If you're using these creative methods, the chances are that you'll get audited every single year by the IRS or local equivalent. Trump famously gets audited every year. Your tax lawyers & accountants will then negotiate a tax payment with the tax office. I used the word negotiate because there is no one true formula for tax owed. It doesn't exist, especially not for corporations.

When you add in 'creative' intellectual property ownership and royalty payments, then the tax office basically has no idea where money is flowing. This is why EU countries commonly lob these huge penalties. Facebook tries to pay X in tax, and the tax office says they should pay X2, and then after negotiation they pay X1.5.

Re: Facebook agrees to pay France €106M in back taxes

#10

Post by sp332 »

sukilot wrote: post #8
syoussry wrote: post #5

As a French citizen, I also "agreed" to pay my taxes last year :). I even paid the full amount I was being claimed. How generous of me.

Facebook also plays the full amount it claims. The issue is that there was an ambiguity in the law that was recently discussed and resolved.

The social networking giant did not share details of the tax dispute

Do you have a good description of what the ambiguity was?

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