Three European Countries Block Tax on Tech Giants • Hacker News Board

Re: Three European Countries Block Tax on Tech Giants

#321

Post by Natela » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 9:43 PM UTC

xps wrote: post #284

I feel that if that law was to pass, the affected companies would simply add that 3% tax to the prices European consumers pay, especially since this is a tax on the revenue and not on profit. It's not like US tech giants have much competition to fear from European companies anyway. A 3% price increase isn't going to get anyone to switch to another service (except maybe in the case of Amazon's physical sales). In the…

But what is this price we pay for FB and Google services ? 3% increase on 0€ is still 0€.

We don't pay for Google with money but with our privacy. I'm perfectly fine with making my privacy more expensive to buy for Google.

Re: Three European Countries Block Tax on Tech Giants

#322

Post by jplayer01 » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 10:31 PM UTC

bsaul wrote: post #108

kachurovskiy wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please help me understand why is it okay to tax people on income but not corporations?

Sorry, the project is actually about taxing "revenue", i fixed it, thanks. Taxing on revenue means a corporation that actually loose money because its expenses (salaries, investmenst, etc) are larger than its sales would still have to pay taxes, making it loose even more money. It doesn't make any kind of sense unless you're targeting a very particular set of companies that you know are making money. In which case yo…

You realize it's possible to adjust the taxes required on revenue so that it doesn't dwarf profit. It doesn't automatically follow that taxing revenue means that the taxes will be insanely, unpayably high. It's a strawman argument.

Re: Three European Countries Block Tax on Tech Giants

#323

Post by woodpanel » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 2:55 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #294

woodpanel wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then we give the Irish exactly the same amount they're currently receiving Please don't take this the wrong way but: There's a whole body of tax-literature and tax-philosophy that renders such a statement naive. How do you figure e.g., how the current money Ireland makes is linked to the increase or decrease of tax-rates? How is it linked to other factors making Ireland worthwhile to invest? How much was Ireland ac…

I acknowledge that my thought experiment was very simplistic and ignores many factors but my point was that I can't really imagine how we'd end up worse off negotiating as a whole union instead of competing with each other internally and trying to undercut your partners at any occasion. I mean, that's the whole principle behind unions (as in syndicate of workers for instance), as a whole you have more bargaining powe…

> The only thing that we've had consistently over hundreds (or even thousand) of years in Europe is warfare and royal inbreeding

While I used to say exactly that for most of my life, trust me this is a gross oversimplification. With an emphasis on gross. Law traditions date back to the Romans, Celts, Germanics and others at least. And of course no sovereign country on the onset of the EU would have accepted the new EU norms if they were to contradict with their own. That the EU nowadays tries to impose rules that contradict those norms is reason for the ever rising resentment of Brussels around Europe.

> If we could avoid having to invade Ireland

You say it yourself: How can we declare moral superiority if we are openly discussing invading Ireland because we've abandoned pillar principles like national sovereignty?

How can you lament "over hundreds (or even thousand) of years in Europe [of] warfare" while simultaneously abandon the core lesson of those wars (sovereignty)?

Re: Three European Countries Block Tax on Tech Giants

#324

Post by throwawayy1y1y » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 3:17 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #263

lovich wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have food, water, shelter, and healthcare inputs to maintain my body and keep producing services. Why would my income minus those costs not map to the ideas of revenue and profit?

Because those corporate profits are owned by people, shareholders. What remains after the corporate income tax usually winds up taxed just as your income is; ie generally those profits are not just taxed once. They also get taxed again after distribution. Or if the company later spends it to eg hire someone to try to expand, that also generates income taxation. Or if they buy something with it (new equipment) to bols…

Honest question, why if I want to give some money to another person it's going to be taxed again although it was already taxed (except close family etc.) in context to that double taxation you wrote about.