Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

EU lost up to €5.4B in tax revenues from Google, Facebook: report

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–224 of 224 posts

Re: EU lost up to €5.4B in tax revenues from Google, Facebook: report

#221

Post by staticelf »

Eridrus wrote: post #214
staticelf wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you mean that companies like Facebook and Google that uses my countrys roads, medical system (for their employees, you don't need to pay for that in my country) and similar stuff, they should pay no tax? Facebook have a big datacenter in my country, partly funded by the government. But yeah, they should pay no taxes. They only consume a lot more of everything than any other company and should give nothing back. I…

Your employees pay taxes for healthcare, I'm sure you have some sort of tax on petrol to maintain your roads, I'm sure the local trucking company that actually drove on the roads paid some taxes. I'm sure they pay property taxes on the land they use if you have them. I'm sure they pay for water permits and all that for cooling too. The question is, why is your country entitled to tax their revenue/profits? That is fa…

> The question is, why is your country entitled to tax their revenue/profits? That is far bigger than the marginal stress they put on your resources.

Because my country offers highly educated personell and their education is enabled to exist due to taxes not only towards people being employed but for companies taking out profits as well.

The idea of a company taking out profits from another country even if the value of the product is created in my country by our trained personell is fucked up and will in the long run result be an economic disaster for my country since we can't fund our establishments.

Also, it will render the market less competative since smaller shops have a harder time to compete against these giants who pay nearly 0% tax.

Re: EU lost up to €5.4B in tax revenues from Google, Facebook: report

#222

Post by aembleton »

taysic wrote: post #220
aembleton wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be an advantage to local companies - yes! At the moment, local companies are often at a disadvantage because they're paying more tax than those companies who are legally based overseas. If the product or service doesn't exist locally, then the purchasing company will indeed need to pay tax, if and only if it's local sales are greater than local costs. If buying this overseas service such as AWS hosting gives…

This is one of those things that sounds great on paper but in practice basically kills any chance of a startup environment in the country. Why would a startup wish to grow in such a nation if there are other places where the ability to buy useful services from other international companies are so much cheaper?

Because a startup is likely to have greater local costs than local sales and so wouldn't pay any taxes.

When you start a company, you have many local costs (wages, rent, utilities) and yet you haven't made any sales. In the tech sector, when you do make sales they are likely to be at least in part overseas.

Therefore, it will be a while before you then have to pay any tax. When you get big enough that your local sales become larger than your local costs, then you will probably be able to afford the extra tax as you are now benefiting from the infrastructure provided by the state.

Re: EU lost up to €5.4B in tax revenues from Google, Facebook: report

#223

Post by peoplewindow »

lucideer wrote: post #196
peoplewindow wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you cite the parts of the treaties that say that? The reality is that in the treaties the EU very explicitly does not have control over tax . In fact, this was a key issue in the last Irish referendum on the EU treaty changes. The Irish rejected the treaty until they received explicit assurances from the EU that they'd never lose any control over local tax and the EU wouldn't attempt to undermine their local corp…

The EU doesn't have any direct control over tax, but the treaties govern how law is applied by member states, including tax law. They do this in a multitude of ways, but in the specific case mentioned above you're looking for Article 107 of this treaty[0] which prohibits member states giving corporations individual tax deals that are not afforded to others operating in the same market. The follow-on report on Google,…

You prove my point. Article 107 says nothing about tax at all. The EU's case depends on a bizarre redefinition of taxation as "aid", as if taking something away is the same thing as giving it. Article 107 is meant to handle subsidies, hence the discussion of granting things through state resources.

Obviously, nobody told the Irish people that their nation's tax decisions might be retroactively re-classified as "aid" ... and nobody told them that because they were explicitly told that tax was not an EU competency.

There's really no way around that outcome. Regardless of how the EU likes to reinterpret the treaties to grant it newfound powers nobody thought it had, the people of Ireland know what they were promised and know that it's been violated.

Post reply on HN