101–110 of 266 posts
Why businesses are taxed so low but individuals/employees so high in EU (35%-65% income tax)?
Because businesses are owned by people who in turn are taxed. In effect any corporation tax is a double tax.
There are a whole host of corporate entities which allow for pass-through taxation: LLC, S-Corp, sole proprietorships, and the like. I'd be surprised if European countries didn't have similar mechanisms.
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Are you confusing profit with revenue? The revenue is in France - easy. Profit is revenue - cost, which costs do you factor in?
At some point, I think governments are going to need to break down and start taxing revenue instead of profits. A 3% tax on total revenue is the same as a 15% tax on the profits of a product with 20% profit margins.
It also discourages long-term investments, and further rewards short-termism (which everyone seems to dislike).
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Why should the profit be made in france if the engineering that went into delivery was made in the US, the content was made in X, the deal for the content was negotiated in Y, network source is Z (probably france, but not necessarily) VAT in France on the subscription makes sense, but figuring out where the profit lies, is more nebulous.
It's where the profits are, not where the cost centers are. If the customers are in France, the profits are in France.
If I have a warehouse in France, some of the profit was in France and some was where it was made in the US. Same thing here where there's lots of small pieces done wherever.
Meanwhile the Swedish government is giving massive incentives to Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft to build data centers (and I assume other countries do too). Almost zero taxing on electricity and actual monetary payouts. In other words, this is a bit of a headline without any actual teeth (there’s plenty of ways to compete unfairly), which is the problem when you start wanting to govern the world, you can’t co…
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Ideally both should not be taxed.
Then where do we get the money to pay for things like the justice system, law enforcement, national infrastructure, unemployment benefits, healthcare, pensions, customs, diplomats,...? Switch to a system where the government owns everything and gives people what they need if they work properly?
The MMT argument for taxation is that it's necessary to encourage demand for a currency, thus making it more valuable. But there's no fundamental reason that a government which controls its own currency must collect taxes to pay for various services.
Congress could pay state and local governments directly each year.
If you're willing to throw away some property rights, then state and local governments could theoretically lease land as a means of raising revenue without direct taxation. (this is a terrible idea)
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A reasonable modified goal would be "profits generated by a country's residents are taxed by that country."
Yeah, I would not even mind a "no double citizenship" rule.
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It's where the profits are, not where the cost centers are. If the customers are in France, the profits are in France.
What if Netflix France has to license their content and platform from Netflix US, the the license costs are coincidentally exactly the same as the revenue made in France? Then there will be no profits in France.
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Why should the profit be made in france if the engineering that went into delivery was made in the US, the content was made in X, the deal for the content was negotiated in Y, network source is Z (probably france, but not necessarily) VAT in France on the subscription makes sense, but figuring out where the profit lies, is more nebulous.
Because that is where the sale happened. You buy a lot of stuff that was made in China but pay tax in your country right? Not only was the sale in france, the goods that the customer pay for (video content) are delivered too france like normal goods and watched/consumed in france.
I don't really like this kind of idea because it really goes against a kind of fundemental freedom. "If you don't like it, you can leave". Instead, laws around making sure that the profits generated from a countries citizens are taxed by that country make more sense to me. A lot of laws around that already exist, and I suppose a lot of people would say that they have not been effective. A lot of it comes down to the…
I'm not sure it's a fundamental freedom, but it is important.
If a law exists over the whole world, there's no competition and no alternative to compare against.