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

Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 366 posts

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#331

Post by atoav »

johndhi wrote: post #196
alexey-salmin wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well they certainly do want the revenues from users outside of Ireland

People with guns forcibly going through your things with threat of prison time tends to erase desire for revenue. See international business climate in China.

Them not paying taxes where I live means they can stay out till they do. Why should I have to compete with multinationals that don't play by the rules?

I expect my polkticians not to let themselves be dazzled by the complexity of their tax schemes and tax them the same amount they would if I sold that service here.

Does not seem too controversial.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#332

Post by izacus »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #260
izacus wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This theorycrafting is cute, but in reality you've mixed up corporate entities and yourself as a person in a criminal case. And if a corporate entity finds a way to openly defy a national government, it tends to happen that those governments find a way to change the law (they're the ones making it, right? :P) for that defiance to become punishable by other parts of those governments which can sanction the corporation…

You're conflating two different things here. One is, what does the law say? Did they violate it? Is it illegal for a foreign subsidiary to temporarily shut off access to a branch office? How would we like this to work? Policy arguments about law enforcement vs. due process and government overreach. The other is, politics. If the local government is captured by a cartel of taxi medallion holders who don't like Uber, t…

No, what I'm saying is that governments aren't compilers you mess around with at will when you're as big as Netflix. The fact that something might be illegal is a changeable state by that very government if they decide a corporation has been jerking them around too much. Something being legal right now is a temporary state.

Did you miss all the screaming of US corporations in relation to EU Acts like DMA? Those changes are exactly what happens when you start to think that law and people behind it are separate.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#333

Post by intelVISA »

Algent wrote: post #69
seiferteric wrote: post #5

I wonder how these "office raids" would work for remote first companies that don't have much of an office presence and with little or no physical documents and everything being stored in the cloud somewhere.

That's basically what happened when they tried (twice I think ?) to raid Uber offices in France, their boss pressed a kill switch and everything went down in seconds. It completely blocked the investigation. Afterward Uber helped Macron campaign who then ordered National Financial Prosecutor's office to "stop bothering them" so I don't think anything new happened since. Edit: Some sources in below replies for infos o…

Some Saturday morning cartoon villain behavior, lol.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#334

Post by atoav »

haccount wrote: post #223
atoav wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are aware of the fact that tax evasion means these companies are freeloading on the tax money the rest of us (including: you) are paying? Especially in the case of uber which is essentially using public infrastructure to make their money having them pay taxes should be normal. I agree that customer data needs to be protected, but it is bold to assume that is the case at all with these powerful corporate entities:…

The law was always there to step on the little man, the VIPs always had it easier. Stop thinking too much about it.

nah I think we need systemic rules that help the little man while making it harder the bigger an entity grows.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#335

Post by illiac786 »

johndhi wrote: post #196
alexey-salmin wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well they certainly do want the revenues from users outside of Ireland

People with guns forcibly going through your things with threat of prison time tends to erase desire for revenue. See international business climate in China.

If it’s predictable, they can plan for it. Don’t do tax fraud => no raids. I would say that some businesses just make a risk evaluation mistake and end up being raided.

China is a little more arbitrary and political, that makes it less predictable and bad for business.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#336

Post by account42 »

gruez wrote: post #328
izacus wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're in favor of holding executives hostage to demand access to data? If they actually did something illegal, they can be arrested/tried for that, but arresting executives as a means to coerce companies into doing stuff is a total perversion of the rule of law. Turns out that witholding data as a company executive is outright illegal, so yeah, we're in favor of it and they can get arrested and charged for for it.

>Turns out that witholding data as a company executive is outright illegal, so yeah, we're in favor of it and they can get arrested and charged for for it. Except in this case it's not the executive that has the data. The data is sitting on some cloud server somewhere, and the executive no longer has access because the CISO got wind of the raid and locked his account. If you're holding the executive, you're not holdi…

So?

If executives don't want to sit in jail due to their company's shady tactics they can just not approve those tactics.

Alternative would be to shut the business down completely until they cooperate.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#337

Post by lifestyleguru »

greyw wrote: post #324
dr_kretyn wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't. That happened some time around 2000. Unless your theory is that ~11 years isn't enough to change generations in which case there's more than that, right? Then give other examples.

Governments can block acquisitions and mergers for various reasons. Why this didnt happen in this case I dont know. Maybe they didnt understand the impact maybe regulators got paid off.

> Unless your theory is that ~11 years isn't enough to change generations in which case there's more than that

For the people holding power one decade is an eyeblink, the only generation change will be when they'll install their own children as a replacement.

> Maybe they didnt understand the impact maybe regulators got paid off.

They got paid off and by Western standards it was a bargain.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#338

Post by scotty79 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #325
scotty79 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like this idea of collecting this tax yearly. I'd skip the power formula and have this tax to be just fixed percentage on every purchase to be able to collect it immediately and automatically by using the banking system itself. My capital gains tax is immediately collected as my bank sees any capital gains. I physically can't dodge it. Similarily I could have tax on every purchase I pay for with any kind of b…

A flat sales tax rate is regressive. I don’t see a reason to give rich people that benefit. Roughly speaking, the effects of consumption are not linear. A private jet, yacht, and large and heavy vehicles are going to consume much more public goods (including the environment) than cheaper goods.

You can skew the tax by giving more tax credit to the poor.

Also those are not only taxes on consumption but every purchase. Yacht might be too cheap in comparison of resources used but rich don't just buy yahts, they buy entire companies.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#339

Post by lm28469 »

thrw42A8N wrote: post #322
lm28469 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you said it doesn't matter because we don't know the numbers, yet the numbers we do know about don't match any scenario that doesn't involve large scale tax """optimisation"""

Accusations like this have to be founded on serious grounds, otherwise you make the whole argument appear foolish.

My dude... they literally are in court right now over these things... it's a known thing for years now, apple just got fined by the EU for the same shenanigans. It really isn't a conspiracy or a secret, everybody knows it, they just use the very convoluted EU laws and systems to get away with it but the door is slowly closing

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#340

Post by lomase »

lacy_tinpot wrote: post #284
lomase wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only 50% of Americans have Passports. 80% in Europe. We understand it, because we travel there on, our paid, vacations. My last time in America I went to San Francisco, lots of money, I have not seen a worst place to live in my life. Americans don't understand the quality of life other places have.

And other places don’t understand the sheer amount of wealth and freedom other people have. "It costs a lot of money to look this cheap" and San Francisco spends billions to look that cheap btw. Especially Europe. Europeans don’t even seem to understand how large America is, which is why so few have passports.

America, the land of the free... the place where I could not even walk at night because the streets were full of homless people.
Post reply on HN