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Three European Countries Block Tax on Tech Giants

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Re: Three European Countries Block Tax on Tech Giants

#311

Post by bluecalm »

gruez wrote: post #260
bluecalm wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is because taxing profit is a very bad idea. It leads to situations where two companies doing exactly the same thing pay different taxes because one uses less efficient (and often more polluting) technology or just chooses to buy luxury cars for the employees instead of showing profits. The tax on profits is a tax on honesty in accounting and even if accountats are honest it's still impossible to determine fair…

>or just chooses to buy luxury cars for the employees instead of showing profits. those purchases are taxed as income

I meant buying them as company cars. I hoped it's obvious. It's the reason there are so many nice things bought by companies and why they organize expensive symposiums and meetings in nice locations - there is a rebate on that.

Re: Three European Countries Block Tax on Tech Giants

#312

Post by bluecalm »

rubber_duck wrote: post #183
amelius wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is because taxing profit is a very bad idea. Wouldn't the same argument hold for income tax then? I mean, I can evade income tax to a certain extent by making my boss buy me a nice car, computer, bicycle etc.

He can't, if he buys it as company expense then it's not your property. But yeah same is true for income tax, my country has a really high wage income tax at top bracket (close to 50% with health&benefits) that kicks in really fast, but profit income tax caps at 20% because people would just take profits out of the country if it was higher. so a lot of people work around it by invoicing their salary as self owned com…

It makes some sense because wages come with a lot of benefits guaranteed by labor law while self employed people take a lot of risks but in general I see progressive taxes as a bad idea inviting scams. It's better to tax consumption of luxury goods at higher rate and/or use more tax revenue to fund social services mainly poorer people use.

Re: Three European Countries Block Tax on Tech Giants

#313

Post by flosim »

ionised wrote: post #299
flosim wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, the whole aspect on which the EU is a no-brainer is peace, and leverage against powerful lunatics and maniacs, like Trump and Putin. Which is precisely why the latter is hell-bent on dismantling it. Not from the economical standpoint.

I don't think the the people who value their ideology more than pragmatism are concerned with peace to be honest.

To be honest, it's not about what people value. It's about what we have in practice. There hasn't been a war between EU countries for a while now, and that's something that I appreciate, given our history. Sure, you could argue that nuclear dissuasion is the reason why, but we don't even have any kind of cold war going on either, and I think the EU is to thank for that.

What's really good is that this creates a system where it's not only nonexistent, but it's also not even possible at all. It's like what Typescript/a linter does to Javascript: the EU greatly discourages entire classes of problems threatening the life/well-being of its citizens.

The leverage against foreign countries is a real pragmatic thing, though, not some ideology. Why else do you think Trump celebrated Brexit, and actively tries to break up different unions that we've spent years building, like NATO? I'm not saying that he's the devil, even though I'm not a big fan, but I understand that he's doing it to have his way with less opposition. Divide and conquer?

Re: Three European Countries Block Tax on Tech Giants

#314

Post by flosim »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #286
flosim wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More competitive, OK. Who doesn't want their country to be more competitive anyway, whatever that means? Certainly no one in their right mind would argue to make it more diverse, more educated while we're at it? How about you share how you think this could work? While I agree for more competitiveness for my country, history has shown me repeatedly that low taxes isn't actually working out that great. Equating low tax…

Why would it be lower taxes? All the major tech hubs in the US are in higher tax areas (by US standards). If lower taxes were the solution, you'd see Silicon Valley in Texas or Oklahoma or somewhere like that.

The fact that you commented against a proposal made by a parent made me believe that you were in agreement with it. Sorry!

Re: Three European Countries Block Tax on Tech Giants

#315

Post by woodpanel »

lultimouomo wrote: post #285
woodpanel wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but I think you didn't read my comment. No tax is paid by the customer. He always pays gross. For example: you run a barber shop, mens haircut 10 €, womens 10€. You charge mens from your VAT-exempt company, women from your non-VAT-exempt company. Regardless of what you get in net, the customers hand you 10€ each. However the government takes 2€ from your womens hair cutting business, after you've filed your ta…

> If I may ask: Do you run a business where you have to deal with filing VAT on a regular basis? I'm asking because this misconception that businesses don't have to pay VAT is something that I've held myself, obviously because I didn't knew back then what I was talking about. I very much do, I file quarterly and deal both domestically, intra-EU with reverse charge and extra-EU which is VAT exempt. You're conflating t…

Okay I see this is getting nowhere ;-) Let me quote another user on this thread:

> "it’s absolutely not the same. If the VAT goes up 10%, your benefits after taxes won’t change one bit. VAT is indeed not paid by corporations."

but if you insist that somehow the customer is paying VAT to the government, then fine with me. I'm not here to be other people's tax-attorney.

Re: Three European Countries Block Tax on Tech Giants

#316

Post by Rexxar »

bsaul wrote: post #288
Rexxar wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is that company is the tax collector, not the tax payer. IMHO it's mainly a semantic distinction, the result is practically the same.

it’s absolutely not the same. If the VAT goes up 10%, your benefits after taxes won’t change one bit. VAT is indeed not paid by corporations.

If price is already fixed in a contract it's not the same, indeed. For new client, it's basically equivalent as the price will adjust. (For example, higher TVA => client pay more => less demand => you have to reduce margin to keep some clients. In this case even if you don't technically pay the tax, you lose money if the tax become higher).

Re: Three European Countries Block Tax on Tech Giants

#317

Post by rusk »

oarsinsync wrote: post #300
rusk wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I’m stating that as an absolute fact.

Can you provide any evidence, as everything I can see shows 12.5% on trading income, and 25% on non-trading income. Are you referring to the non-trading income corporation tax rate, or is there something else going on? If something else, that sounds an awful lot like corruption

Legal corruption

Re: Three European Countries Block Tax on Tech Giants

#318

Post by Farradfahren »

grumpydba wrote: post #242
bsaul wrote: post #82

As a french, seing french government officials trying to impose their knee-jerk « let’s tax it » reaction to any kind of problem makes me absolutely sick. They’re just a bunch of jealous incompetent insufferable pompous politicians than don’t understand a thing about the private sector and so instead of trying to fix the numerous reason why we don’t have any competitor to google / facebook etc ( such as our best engi…

As a fellow french having lots of tax lawyer friends, let me just say that you are naive. Google & al earn money in France, they should pay taxes. Simple. Right now those tech giants are using dubious tactics to avoid paying their fair share. What is needed is simply justice and fairness.

Its actually favouring big companys, who push and punnish little companys and startups who all have to pay their taxes.

Re: Three European Countries Block Tax on Tech Giants

#319

Post by slededit »

ionised wrote: post #299
flosim wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, the whole aspect on which the EU is a no-brainer is peace, and leverage against powerful lunatics and maniacs, like Trump and Putin. Which is precisely why the latter is hell-bent on dismantling it. Not from the economical standpoint.

I don't think the the people who value their ideology more than pragmatism are concerned with peace to be honest.

Was it wrong for the parliamentarians to fight the royalists in the first English civil war? Many lives were lost but the foundations of democracy were set and the monarchy weakened. The pragmatic view would have been to maintain the status quo that had worked for hundreds of years rather than the uncertainty of war.

Every person has their breaking point where mere pragmatism no longer holds sway. Peace, but at what cost?

Re: Three European Countries Block Tax on Tech Giants

#320

Post by Natela »

bsaul wrote: post #82

As a french, seing french government officials trying to impose their knee-jerk « let’s tax it » reaction to any kind of problem makes me absolutely sick. They’re just a bunch of jealous incompetent insufferable pompous politicians than don’t understand a thing about the private sector and so instead of trying to fix the numerous reason why we don’t have any competitor to google / facebook etc ( such as our best engi…

As a European I think this is a smart move on the contrary.

Google cannot get rid of the EU market, if it does, EU competitors might have a chance. So the EU can just tax Google as much as it wants. What are we to be afraid of ? Google leaving EU ? Please do ! This will only gives us a chance to come we our own solution to the web Google&FB think they invented.

I don't get how we could not be glad that we tax more those dystopian companies. Google, FB, etc... don't respect any values of privacy and freedom, they should not have even the right to do what they do in EU and GDPR is step in the right direction for that.

The only problem is that we have no weight if we don't act together, so if some European countries are too short-sighted and put their self little short term interest above the rest and prefer offer encourage Google's development, then yes we will fail.

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