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Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

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Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#241

Post by cscurmudgeon »

EdHominem wrote: post #166
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Google was heavily dependent on funding from various branches of the USG in its early stages. Search for it. > case a search engine that's miles ahead of its closest competitor, Bing Thats debatable. Any blind studies?

Do you need blind studies to know that you like Chocolate? To know that it's raining? Yes, a study could show that Bing's results are x% less useful that Google's, but who would want to keep using Bing long enough to quantify the suck?

How scientific of you! :)

> but who would want to keep using Bing long enough to quantify the suck?

20% of the market?

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#242

Post by EdHominem »

EdHominem wrote: post #160
stuaxo wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

And France deserves a piece of this? That's silly. Like saying that Comcast deserves a piece of what I pay to Netflix. But robbing Peter to pay Paul is a valid political decision because you only have be appear to be doing something...

The idea that France is owed a piece of all media-spend directed towards french people is disgusting and legally unsupportable.

The only reason it's even a debatable issue is that they forced Google to redirect the .com domain to the .fr domain for IPs geo-located in France. No country can be trusted with this power because this is only where it starts.

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#243

Post by EdHominem »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #241
EdHominem wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you need blind studies to know that you like Chocolate? To know that it's raining? Yes, a study could show that Bing's results are x% less useful that Google's, but who would want to keep using Bing long enough to quantify the suck?

How scientific of you! :) > but who would want to keep using Bing long enough to quantify the suck? 20% of the market?

Even if we believe the 20% figure, what's the chance that they made that choice?

Considering Microsoft popularized the dark pattern of changing preferences during auto-updates...

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#244

Post by toast0 »

gnopgnip wrote: post #125
mike_hearn wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Structuring laws are highly controversial and have caused huge amounts of pain for innocent people who were just legitimately trying to reduce their paperwork burden. They're bad laws.

The laws only apply to cash deposits, not money orders, checks, or any electronic transfers. What is a better alternative to stop money laundering?

Reduce the impact of the reporting. Many of the stories I read had a component of "big weekly deposits took a long time because someone would have to fill out a report" or "banks closed my account because they didn't want to fill out the reports" which lead people to do more frequent deposits or split their banking between multiple banks or pay expenses in cash. I don't think the amount triggering reporting is linked to inflation either.

I don't know what's on the form, but of you fill out once a week, there should be a way to be quick about it.

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#245

Post by chillacy »

gnaritas wrote: post #207
chillacy wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is doing business not a privilege elsewhere? In the US you need to register your business and pay taxes (money from corporations are doubly taxed as well). The only businesses here who don't do that are drug dealing / crime enterprises.

> money from corporations are doubly taxed as well No they are not. Money is always taxed when it changes ownership, as corporations are legal persons, it pays taxes on its profit. When shareholders are given some of that profit via dividends, that money is again changing ownership so it taxed as income to those shareholders. Saying something is double taxed is to misunderstand "when" tax applies. If you don't want c…

Double taxation isn't just some vague term I made up: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/double_taxation.asp

What you described is commonly referred to as double taxation. I merely pointed out that this is more evidence that businesses are legal entities defined by the government. If businesses weren't legal entities, this wouldn't be an issue.

However you could have noted that most corporate money is dished out as salaries and bonuses, which isn't taxed twice because the company can deduct it as a business expense.

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#246

Post by iofj »

allendoerfer wrote: post #223
dragonwriter wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Juries deciding whether murderers are guilty or not. Simply unthinkable over here. Well, that might be unthinkable in Germany , but its clearly not in Europe as a whole, since we got that from a place in Europe that hasn't abandoned it in the time since their system migrated to North America.

>Well, that might be unthinkable in Germany, but its clearly not in Europe as a whole, since we got that from a place in Europe that hasn't abandoned it in the time since their system migrated to North America. The UK is clearly an outlier. They also drive on the wrong side of the road and have a strange relationship to the metric system :D

There are 2 legal systems in Europe (and the world).

1) "US-style" English Common Law, applies in Great Britain (and former British Empire worldwide, like Australia, Canada, Kenia, ...). Biggest distinguishing features : right to a jury trial, precendents carry legal weight (judges have to follow earlier judgements when possible), opposing experts, ...

2) "French (Revolution) Law", sometimes named after Napoleon, applies essentially everywhere else. No right to jury trials (some courts have jury trials, most don't), precendents can be cited but carry no legal weight, experts are chosen by the court, ...

There are of course important legal differences outside of these high level differences.

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#247

Post by Tomte »

allendoerfer wrote: post #226
Tomte wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany noone can be convicted of murder (or any other grave crime) without at least one lay judge agreeing. In the case of murder trials (three professional judges, two lay judges), you need four votes, because three would be less than the required two thirds.

You cannot compare German/Austrian Schöffen to an American amateur jury. They are semi-professionals appointed for 5 years, not random people doing a random case. And as you said, they form a panel with 3 professional judges and are not left alone in a room.

Yes, I can and do.

Of course it's different.

But they are certainly not "semi-professional".

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#248

Post by nametakenobv »

EdHominem wrote: post #242
EdHominem wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And France deserves a piece of this? That's silly. Like saying that Comcast deserves a piece of what I pay to Netflix. But robbing Peter to pay Paul is a valid political decision because you only have be appear to be doing something...

The idea that France is owed a piece of all media-spend directed towards french people is disgusting and legally unsupportable. The only reason it's even a debatable issue is that they forced Google to redirect the .com domain to the .fr domain for IPs geo-located in France. No country can be trusted with this power because this is only where it starts.

This is just pointless drivel. Do you understand why taxation exists at all? Government is not some arbitrary institution that just sits there and gets money. The government is the people. The french people say "if you want to do business with us, you have to pay for the privilege". The government is the vehicle to facilitate this. Less Ayn Rand, more real economics and politics before criticizing, please.

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#249

Post by Kell »

hvalika wrote: post #224
Kell wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclosure : French law is my field of work but I only have knowledge of this case by the media (which is terrible in legal matters in France, really, worse than the US sometimes). It seems that the prosecutors are using a small clause in the French Irish tax treaty saying that the taxation rules applying to a corporation officially incorporated in Ireland are different (implying much higher than the Irish 12.5%), if…

Thanks Kell - I must ask - did Google ever approach the French Revenue Authorities and try to get a ruling ahead of time? I assume they are arguing that Google does not have a permanent establishment in France.

We don't know if they tried to get a tax ruling beforehand. And unfortunately I'm not familiar enough with the case to speculate on it.

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#250

Post by Bartweiss »

SilasX wrote: post #132
Bartweiss wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In America, there's at least one clear example of this - laws against "structuring". Basically, they say that it's criminal to arrange financial transactions with the purpose of avoiding laws about financial transactions. As an example, banks are required to report all deposits of $20,000. It's a right to deposit $19,999 into a bank account, nothing wrong there. But to deposit $19,999 five times in a row, rather than…

Does this raise all sorts of issues related to the Sorites Paradox and induction? "It's illegal to break the transaction into pieces of size n-1 to circumvent the law against n sized pieces. And so it's illegal to break it into n-2 sized pieces to circumvent the circumvention of breaking into n sized pieces. And so it's illegal to ..."

Pretty much, yes. I think that's what drove the decision to write a law criminalizing "attempts to avoid" rather than anything specific, but it doesn't actually avoid the paradox. It's a bit of a hazy crime, and one that should be probably only be pursued when there's outside evidence of guilt.

As far as I know, the floor is defined by either "this would be too inconvenient even for money launderers" or "the false positive rate is too high to pursue this more strictly".

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