US tech firms make eleventh-hour attempt to halt tax avoidance reforms

The Conservatives are right leaning from a European perspective and compared to most of the UK governments since the war.

From an American perspective they are more akin to the Democrats: they support gay marriage, support legal abortion, don't support reintroducing the death penalty, support public health care (to some extent), generally support public education, do at least claim to accept that environmental issues are a concern (although we do have an environment secretary who denies climate changes science…). They support giving benefits to at least certain groups in society (pensioners, land owners) and accept the need to provide some level of support for the disabled, unemployed, single parents and so on. They made commitments to maintaining the level of foreign aid. For all their talk of pulling out of the European Convention on Human Rights they have not actually done so. So they have a lot of policies that your typical Republican would be fairly disgusted by.

I wouldn't vote for them myself of course…

Good that you raise Google as an example!

As Google is currently paying almost no taxes, I'm curious that how and how much is Google spending its money to support stuff now supported by the federal government?

For instance, how much is Google paying to people living on federal welfare money, and as the current job markets are what they are, would they have to decide between starving and stealing to survive, or could they still survive with Google handouts?

Military spending is a huge portion of the federal budget. While it is ludicrous how much money is being burned in it, what kind of shape would be military be with the money Google & co are currently spending to support it?

Medicare and Medicaid also are big items in the federal budget. How much is Google spending to offer health care to people who cannot for whatever reason, e.g. disability, cannot pay for it?

> In the UK many leading retail groups have called for reform, highlighting what they see as unfair tax advantages afforded to multinationals such as Amazon by outdated tax treaties.

Currently Amazon pay very little corporation tax in many of the countries they operate in which gives them an unfair tax advange against local competition. This allows them to set lower prices and trade more efficently..

In Amazon's case it would seem like closing some tax loop holes to get them to pay their share would help level the playing field and potentially increase competition between Amazon and regional stores. This can only be a good thing.

The one worry though would be how changing the tax system would affect smaller tech companies. Companies which serve multiple countries with low staff could be caught out by increased tax or just technical / accounting costs if you suddenly need to track and file taxes for every country you have customers in.

Obviously providing jobs for tax payers isn't unique to companies. I can pay for a nanny, chauffeur, and private cook even if I don't have a company. Since your logic is "X provides jobs so X shouldn't be taxed" then I shouldn't have to be taxed if I have any household staff, no?

That logic makes no sense. (If it makes sense to you, please elaborate. How many employees and how many FTEs does one need before this special exemption kicks in, and why that level?)

Now, by "company" I assume you mean "corporation." Corporations form for various reasons, the biggest being liability. Without it, shareholders could be sued individually.

This protection is worth something to the shareholders. I think it's perfectly reasonable that the state, which is the authority that grants companies the right to exist, should be able to extract something from the company - taxes and fees, for example - in order that the company may continue.

Do you think that corporations should exist without paying any fees to the state? If so, why should they get liability protection for free?

If the tax rate is too high, then people could switch from the corporate form of company to a sole proprietorship. A sole proprietor can have employees, and thus "provide jobs for tax payers", even though the business itself is not taxed separately from the proprietor's income.

Now, obviously there's a large set of trade-offs, and the example I gave - a switch to sole proprietorship - is too blunt. My point is that the idea that "provide jobs" necessarily implies "should not be taxed" is so simplistic that it more indicates a lack of understanding of why there are companies in the first place.

Google is here in the UK, but why? Well there is the educated workforce to hire, there is a stable business environment, there is infrastructure that works most of the time etc. Now they could go and set up somewhere there really is no tax to be paid, Somalia maybe, but how long would those "global business geniuses" last there? Not long. What would happen to a Google Bus in downtown Mogadishu?

Google and companies like it can only exist in the benign environment created by strong-ish national governments. Pretending otherwise is just foolish.