151–160 of 259 posts
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Can you cite that? That's certainly not the opinion of ~50% of Americans
Which might explain why Americans are driven slave labor with little to no protections and a laughable excuse for social safety net. Just because an opinion is majority, does not make it intelligent, nor right.
>Several have been accused of using legal methods to minimise their tax bills. What a terrible accusation. Good to know the whole world needs some serious tax reform.
https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/4ktdm2/google_hq_raid...
As others have pointed out this can happen in France given the way in which laws are prosecuted, my sister lives there part time and really likes this aspect of the country. That said, its really interesting to watch such powerful interests dance around (in a more general sense) shooting each other. The whole scheme which companies like Apple, Google, others use to "legitimately" minimize their tax burden and the fin…
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For example, as an Irish company, you can open a subsidiary in France to do business in France. The whole point of the EU single market is that you do not have to do that. You can set up shop in Ireland and sell to the French market until the cows come home. You only owe Irish taxes (modulo the recent completely crazy VAT changes). Laws that say "forget the law, anything we think is unreasonable is illegal" are a gro…
>Laws that say "forget the law, anything we think is unreasonable is illegal" are a growing problem in Europe. It makes the EU look like fools Not trying to start a flamewar here, but the common German/European perspective on the US legal system consists of corporations owning it (because of huge costs), consumers abusing it ("cat in microwave/washing machine/toaster", unreasonable compensations, class action lawsuit…
Maybe not in Germany, but France has juries for murder case since 1810, actually, a jury is theoretically mandatory for any case where a sentence of more than 10 years in prison is possible. The accused cannot waive this "right" like in some cases in the US. (in practice, because juries take a lot of court time, are shaky and difficult to manage, prosecutors often will prosecute a serious crime like a less serious similar one to avoid having to go in front of a jury (e.g. instead of prosecuting something as rape, do it as if it was sexual assault). The prosecutor must have the agreement of the victim and the accused to do it).
Also, it's not only France. Austria, Greece, Italy, Belgium and others have that sort of jury.
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We might have our kinks, but I don't think that most of the people in jail ended up in there because "Yea, what you were doing was allowed by the law, but you know we kind of didn't like it". When that finally starts to happen in the USA, you can count on me being in the streets protesting. Edit: You may also want to consider the current practices in Germany regarding frivolous law suits against websites. We aren't t…
How many people are in jail for life without parole because of 3 strikes laws? Thus in prison for life because their 3rd minor crime tips them over 3 strikes?
I know there are problems with the application of three strikes, but it's not terribly unreasonable to say that we have little cause to believe that you will reform after, say, murdering or raping your third victim and therefore little reason to let you out of prison such that you can seek new ones. And it's your third felony that puts you over, it's not like they can bust you for jaywalking, though I'm sure there are exceptional cases, which could be corrected by presidential pardons if there was good cause to believe they've repented.
But I'm sure that's an unpopular opinion here, as I doubt many people here have ever had to worry about someone in prison for murdering their mother who also threatened grandma. Now, it's great if people reform, but committing your third felony is pretty good evidence that you aren't likely to.
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> Getting the VAT rules for online businesses altered so now instead of paying VAT where the sale takes place, you have to pay to the country of the buyer ... woebetide you if you don't speak Hungarian or Croatian. You're gonna have to find someone who does and get them to file a tax return for you. This is a consequence of amazon and apple (and probably others) all "shipping" their digital goods from Luxembourg or I…
Countries charging different tax rates is not a loophole and that's the entire problem the EU has: some countries can't compete with the lower tax areas for cultural reasons. Unless you think Luxembourg is some sort of anarchist hellhole, of course.
It's also not only about cultural reasons: It's the size of the population that matters. Luxembourg has about 500k inhabitants. If they collect all sales digital good in the european union and charge a mere percent of vat on it, they'll increase their tax base significantly. In contrast, if Germany does so it has a more than two orders of magnitude less gain on that. That's why it pays of for Luxembourg, even if they damage the rest of the EU in the process. It's like Washington DC collecting all sales tax for digital goods in the US. Basically some small countries are freeloading at cost for the whole community. (See also the British Tax Havens, or Canal Islands)
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>cat in microwave How oddly specific....were you referencing this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMH8Tof69SE I do agree the U.S has a problem with rather frivulious lawsuits over "not following the letter of the law" or "wasn't mentioned in the safety manual to not do this thing that should have been common sense". It seems when people think "American legal system" things like this come to mind: http://i.imgur.com/…
The peanuts picture is funny, but it's 100% the simple. logical, and safe way to do it.
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> Getting the VAT rules for online businesses altered so now instead of paying VAT where the sale takes place, you have to pay to the country of the buyer ... woebetide you if you don't speak Hungarian or Croatian. You're gonna have to find someone who does and get them to file a tax return for you. This is a consequence of amazon and apple (and probably others) all "shipping" their digital goods from Luxembourg or I…
Countries charging different tax rates is not a loophole and that's the entire problem the EU has: some countries can't compete with the lower tax areas for cultural reasons. Unless you think Luxembourg is some sort of anarchist hellhole, of course.
They apparently want companies selling to their citizens to pay taxes there, so that the people can choose the way of life - including tax laws - instead of companies dictating them.
Seems like democracy to me; non-EU companies are free to not do business there if they don't want to pay such taxes.
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If the article is to be believed, the problem is that France is prosecuting law-abiding companies, presumably because they're doing business in rival nations.
That's not what the text says. Googles spokesperson is quoted as saying they're complying with the law - but well, what is Googles spokesperson supposed to say? The whole paragraph starting with "accused of" is not about "legally being accused of breaking the law" but about the fact, that this (seemingly) legal tax structuring is under increased scrutiny. One part of that is testing if that's actually really legal be…
(I may have misremembered??)
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Google sells ads through auctions, primarily. Do the auctions take place in France?
One would imagine, that these are adverts served to French people by companies that want to sell products in France. The advert cost is based on views (I.E. eyeballs, of said French people in France).
But robbing Peter to pay Paul is a valid political decision because you only have be appear to be doing something...