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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

#381

Post by NeedMoreTea »

50656E6973 wrote: post #380
ElFitz wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. They need a sufficient internet infrastructure. People with access to it. People with money to spend. People with enough peace of mind to spend it on something else than absolute essentials. People with enough peace of mind and free time to leisurely waste on mostly useless websites. People to whom the physical goods of a great number of their advertisers can be delivered (infrastructure & post system). Eyeball…

Nah, the internet functions fine without the French government, and people are always looking to exploit the poor and helpless. >The differences in CPC between an affluent white male working in tech in San Francisco and a poor black woman selling peanuts on the street in Rufisque, Senegal (which isn't even the most extreme opposite one could think of) is proof of that. Why then are advertising giants like FB so eager…

They have saturation, or as near as they are likely to get, of the valuable eyeballs.

Where else could they expand?

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

#382

Post by effie »

buboard wrote: post #214
99052882514569 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax avoidance via jurisdictional arbitrage is certainly not the essence of EU.

Cross border trade is. And digital businesses , finance, shipping , and many more will increasingly become remote. Right now EU artificially inflates local presence with regulations (by e g not having a bank union). Like it or not though, free trade zone means that taxes wont be paid uniformly. I know that tax avoidance is seen as unfair but it was enabled by the Union.

Cross border trade does not require allowing for the tax avoidance. And the E.U. is changing, just because something was enabled long time ago does not mean it will remain the same. Free trade zone can have many forms.

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

#383

Post by 50656E6973 »

thatcat wrote: post #141
50656E6973 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How could Google make money in France if there was no french police force, education system, market regulation, court system, contract enforcement? By showing ads. Ads only need eyeballs to make money.

Advertising needs a luxury tax for wasting peoples attention, preventing them from being productive and encouraging unhealthy habits - like alcohol and cigarettes.

Agreed. Also don't forget the massive contribution advertising has to ecological destruction by creating insatiable consumerism.

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

#384

Post by ekianjo »

ripdog wrote: post #28
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…

Those large tech companies can make money in France because the french government provides all that is necessary for a free, fair and functioning market. How could Google make money in France if there was no french police force, education system, market regulation, court system, contract enforcement? All money made on the white market in any country is facilitated by that government, and taxes are paid on all profits…

> How could Google make money in France if there was no french police force, education system, market regulation, court system, contract enforcement?

It's not like they don't already pay taxes. This is an additional tax on top of all the other ones.

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

#385

Post by FennNaten »

vonmoltke wrote: post #186
marcus_holmes wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's the point the French are bringing up. French companies pay French taxes. Internet companies serve French markets, take French money, but pay taxes elsewhere, and often they pay no taxes because they can shop around to find a friendly tax haven that doesn't charge them taxes. This is only possible because internet. So, they're imposing a tax on companies that serve French customers via the internet but aren't b…

Why isn't the solution then to force all companies doing business in France to register with the French government and pay taxes on the portion of revenues derived from France?

It is almost already the case. However, there is a loophole. To avoid crashing starting businesses, the current tax is on profits, not on revenues. What big internet companies like Google and Apple do is splitting their companies in several entities. One entity is making the revenues. The other is "administrative services". The administrative one, located in a low-tax country, bills (highly) the one that makes the revenues. So the revenues are made in rich european countries, but the profits are made in the low-tax ones. (The example is oversimplified, but you get the idea). This is clearly cheating, but it's legal. Europe didn't manage to close the loophole because of the countries who profit from it. And no single cheated country has yet acted because the US backs this behavior.

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

#386

Post by 50656E6973 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #142
50656E6973 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How could Google make money in France if there was no french police force, education system, market regulation, court system, contract enforcement? By showing ads. Ads only need eyeballs to make money.

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.)

There are plenty of global advertisers/propagandists willing to pay Google to manipulate the french people. Claiming someone's eyeballs are owned by a government is silly.

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

#387

Post by jadel »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #340
colpabar wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, would you say most French people think the same way? I ask because I'm American and we really hate taxes here.

I am not French, but Swedish, We have similar total tax burden. In general Swedes accept taxes. As it pays for: education, childcare, healthcare, a functional bureaucracy, defence, police and legal system etc. If you don’t get those or they don’t function well, then I can see that people are more hesitant. But there is a cultural difference too. Many (most?) people around me accept that we pay for some freeloaders, a…

Maybe at one point. Today it is all borrowed against the future in the form of private debt, a propped up property market, sold off companies, and tax breaks. Of course people accepts taxes when it is primary labour that is highly taxed and they made hundreds of thousands in the property market so they don't feel like they need to work much any more. It is very unlikely that people would accept taxes to properly fund infrastructure, pensions, the military and whatever else these days.

Edit: Maybe this is uncomfortable for people but it is true. If people are so comfortable paying taxes how come the social democrats are the weakest in decades? How come there is no wealth tax, no inheritance tax, no gift tax, no property tax, deduction for debt, low corporate tax, special tax deals for family businesses, some of the highest privates debt in Europe, as well as some of the highest wealth inequality, most rapid privatization and the highest retirement age? The amount of tax money spent on private sector health care has doubled in 10 years. There is a housing shortage pretty much everywhere, for employees and students alike. The Stockholm subway is run by the Chinese. Volvo is Chinese. So is what is left of SAAB, essentially all Swedish cinemas, mobile operator 3 and partly Spotify, the other Volvo, the Stockholm airport train etc. There isn't going to be any Swedish companies left in 30 years. The steel and paper mills, spirits and other traditional companies are increasingly owned by Finnish companies. Oh, and the right wing populist party with an agenda based on discontent are now the second largest in the polls. Soon enough they will gut public service media like in Denmark.

These are not the traits of a well funded state prepared for the future. People just aren't paying attention.

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

#388

Post by Marsymars »

sverige wrote: post #226
ineedasername wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>so any type of tax is justified? That's a straw man. You're leaping from "some type of tax is justified" which is quite a bit more reasonable than "any tax". And if you want to say it's a slippery slope or some such, well, ever single action if extrapolated to the extreme can be a viewed as such. If 3% is reasonable and then it's proposed to goes up and up, fight the increase, not the initial reasonable action. Of c…

All taxes are a slippery slope. Name one that has ever been repealed. Income tax in the U.S. started out as a modest 3% on only the highest incomes and look where that has ended up: full on wealth redistribution. We can argue whether that's a good thing or not, but not whether there's a slippery slope when it comes to implementing a new tax.

> Name one that has ever been repealed.

Taxes get repealed all the time. My province just repealed its carbon tax a few weeks ago: https://www.alberta.ca/carbon-tax-repeal.aspx

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

#389

Post by FennNaten »

vnorilo wrote: post #289
vonmoltke wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why isn't the solution then to force all companies doing business in France to register with the French government and pay taxes on the portion of revenues derived from France?

Then they would shift net profit to a more favorable environment, i.e. by paying some contrived royalties to the Irish sister company?

That's exactly what they are currently doing. Current tax law applies to profits, so they shift them to ireland.

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

#390

Post by [deleted] »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #381
50656E6973 wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, the internet functions fine without the French government, and people are always looking to exploit the poor and helpless. >The differences in CPC between an affluent white male working in tech in San Francisco and a poor black woman selling peanuts on the street in Rufisque, Senegal (which isn't even the most extreme opposite one could think of) is proof of that. Why then are advertising giants like FB so eager…

They have saturation, or as near as they are likely to get, of the valuable eyeballs. Where else could they expand?

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