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France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US

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Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US

#341

Post by manfredo »

calcifer wrote: post #303
manfredo wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are. The US taxes companies on profits made abroad. The issue is that these taxes are only collected when the money enters th US, so companies park this money abroad.

> They are. The rest of your comment refutes this. They might pay it sometime in the future, but they are not paying it by parking it abroad.

They can't spend it when it's parked abroad either. It's less that they're not paying taxes, just that they aren't paying taxes on it yet.

By comparison, most European countries don't tax companies on foreign earnings at all.

Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US

#342

Post by alwayseasy »

zaroth wrote: post #311
aplummer wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Foreign businesses providing entirely digital services in France aren't actually receiving any kind of service back from the French government. In other words, this specific tax is just a mechanism for collecting money arbitrarily in exchange for nothing. You've just ignored all the above posts without addressing them. The other posts make it clear without any counter argument from you that government provides a sa…

That argument reduces down to “because a market exists” — is that really a compelling justification for this particular additional tax? Because the dollars being used to pay for the digital good have already been taxed, probably many times over, by the time the credit card transaction settles and the merchant account is credited at the end of the week (or whenever). It’s reasonable to question if this particular tax…

No government, no juicy market. Also > the merchant account is credited at the end of the week (or whenever).

Amazon doesn't pay taxes when they're the merchant.

Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US

#343

Post by effie »

friedman23 wrote: post #190
TeMPOraL wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads don't make money from thin air; someone pays for those ads. Google accesses a market of French advertisers, and that market exists because of French government. (Also, arguably, French eyeballs are a resource belonging to France, which Google exploits.)

> Google accesses a market of French advertisers, and that market exists because of French government. Why don't you try justifying that one? Because I posit that if the French government didn't exist the market would exist anyway.

Without government or with a dysfunctional government that is not able to enforce security and laws that businesses rely on, there would be chaotical environment leading to increased poverty, see the Middle East mess. There would always be some demand for things and thus some kind of market, but it would look quite differently from markets in western countries.

Anyway, the ultimate authority on which taxes and to what percentage will be imposed is the guy with the most power to execute decisions in the country. In France, that guy is the France government. You may think that this particular new rule is unfair, but I think the lawmakers do not care. There are already many taxes that are unfair from certain points of view, such as income tax. Life in a country run by a government is not fair, if you interact with the country, you have to obey its laws, the government is not interested whether you agree with them (that is, unless there is many of you so you can get together and put pressure on the government).

Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US

#344

Post by noncoml »

bko wrote: post #15

I never understood the logic behind taxing large internet businesses. The idea behind taxes is that you use some public resource and you pay for that service. You own a home in a neighborhood, you pay property tax that funds the schools. You drive a car, you pay gasoline tax that funds the streets. You hire workers locally, you pay the tax to pay back all the contributions public institutions made to adding the skill…

That's not how taxes work. Government is not a corporation that you pay for using it's resources/services.

Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US

#345

Post by wonder_er »

beowulfey wrote: post #248
bko wrote: post #15

I never understood the logic behind taxing large internet businesses. The idea behind taxes is that you use some public resource and you pay for that service. You own a home in a neighborhood, you pay property tax that funds the schools. You drive a car, you pay gasoline tax that funds the streets. You hire workers locally, you pay the tax to pay back all the contributions public institutions made to adding the skill…

You don't understand it because it is strictly a philosophical difference of yours. You operate in the paradigm of taxation == fees or penalties imposed on people and corporations by the goverment. It is seen as strictly a negative thing. The opposite idea is that taxation is an /investment/ by corporations and individuals, directed and designed by the government, to allow society to keep running smoothly. You may no…

I don't "feel" forced into paying them. I AM forced into paying them.

> no one is able to look past the fact that they feel forced into paying them.

This is rather dismissive of a broad category of valid complaints a group feels.

The US Government uses tax revenue to fund many things, but some of those things are horrifically misguided wars and a global military empire.

is that global military empire an investment? If I had the _option_ of contributing money to the US military, I would never pay a penny to it.

Do the benefit of these "investments" to keep (USA) society running smoothly outweigh the millions of lives lost to misguided wars over the last 50 years?

I'd say no. It's unethical for me to elevate my _possibly_ elevated standard of living over the lives lost and ruined via the Vietnam war, Afghanistan war, Iraqi war, and countless other instances where the US military has ruined communities and countries.

Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US

#346

Post by forty »

bko wrote: post #15

I never understood the logic behind taxing large internet businesses. The idea behind taxes is that you use some public resource and you pay for that service. You own a home in a neighborhood, you pay property tax that funds the schools. You drive a car, you pay gasoline tax that funds the streets. You hire workers locally, you pay the tax to pay back all the contributions public institutions made to adding the skill…

It's simple, in France there is this idea that everyone should contribute to "national solidarity" according to how much they can afford. Internet giant are very rich so they should contribute a lot, and currently there is a sentiment that they don't contribute as much as they should, so this law is simply starting to fix that.

Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US

#347

Post by alwayseasy »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #331
JAlexoid wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VAT is an interesting one, since Amazon isn't even affected by VAT. It's easy to reduce VAT liability altogether. This tax is a crude corporate income tax replacement.

Amazon cannot go around VAT, it is paying it in full to the state; Amazon's customer can deduct VAT if the customer is a business and it is using the product in the production of other products or services that are sold and VAT is collected. The state collects VAT in the end, no matter what.

Amazon doesn't pay the VAT it collects it for the state.

Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US

#348

Post by hermitdev »

filoleg wrote: post #312
zmk_ wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What competitors will Amazon have in France if all the local competitors cannot escape paying local corporate taxes and Amazons of the word just throw a few millions at lawyers to shop around for the most convenient tax haven.

Ah yes, it is the lack of this tax that was preventing France from having their next Amazon. I am willing to bet significant amounts of money that even in 10 years France will have nothing even of remote resemblance of what Amazon was back in 2010, not even going to set the bar at what Amazon is today.

If tax was the burden from a French "Amazon" from founding, they also could easily have a shell in Ireland or Luxembourg. I don't see this at all as France trying to tax Amazon, et all from doing business in France. I see it as a pure money grab. Truly, this isn't really a tax, but more of a tariff. It should be called as such. Maybe it's equally applied against domestic companies and wouldn't be strictly a tariff, but it's intent is most certainly as a tariff.

Edit: I don't work for Amazon, though my brother does. I also don't work at a company that has much of a stake in this fight.

Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US

#349

Post by gamblor956 »

d1zzy wrote: post #313
gamblor956 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I make a video game and sell it to a person in France does it mean I do business in France? Yes, by the commonly and globally accepted definition of "doing business" in a country, selling into a country is doing business in that country. It seems to me it should be treated the same as French person coming to my country, buying my game and going back home. No, it would be more like your company going to France, sel…

> No, it would be more like your company going to France, selling the French guy the game, and then coming back to the US. The burden of tax compliance is placed on you, the seller, because you are the one profiting from the activity and therefore morally (and legally) should shoulder the burden. I don't think that's as clear as you try to make it be. Both parties (seller and buyer) are doing something that is in the…

I'm an international tax lawyer dude...

The seller is making money. That's what matters from a moral and legal perspective. Everywhere. It doesn't matter that the buyer is possibly also getting a benefit.

And you see this reflected in tax laws too where both companies and consumers pay taxes relevant to a transaction.

Please list even one location where both the buyer and the seller pays the transaction tax. Here's a hint: there isn't one. Either the buyer pays, or the seller pays. However, for nearly every transaction tax, the seller collects the tax on behalf of the government and remits that amount to the appropriate tax authority. (In Hawaii and Australia, the seller actually pays the tax--GET or GST, respectively-- but is permitted to pass along the tax to the customer as a separate line item on the invoice. In Hawaii, the seller then owes more tax for the additional charge to the customer.)

Note also: withholding taxes on cross-border payments are not transaction taxes. They're income taxes, which is a very different thing.

Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US

#350

Post by nybble41 »

avip wrote: post #293
colpabar wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think that a company might just raise their prices to pay for those taxes?

Companies raise prices based on demand curve, not cost.

An individual company sets its prices to optimize revenues. That depends only on the demand curve and is independent of costs. However, it's a rare market where even the most marginal suppliers earn enough producer surplus to make up for significant increases in production expenses. If the optimal revenue isn't enough to turn a profit then the business will close. That decrease in supply with no change in demand allows the remaining suppliers to raise their prices—though not necessarily by the full amount of the increase in cost, because only part of the decrease in supply manifests as an increase in price. The rest manifests as potential consumers doing without the good altogether, perhaps turning to lower-priced (but less satisfactory) substitutes.
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