Aren't they already taxed in Ireland, another EU country? Isn't this double taxation?
Yes, France wants money too. Not unreasonable, considering the companies' activities involve French infrastructure and French citizens.
France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US
391–400 of 501 posts
Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US
#392Earlier 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.
This is unequivocally false. A 3% increase could make their costs higher than revenue. They would increase their prices or go out of business.
Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US
#393Earlier 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?
Why would they invest so heavily there if there was nothing to be gained?
Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US
#394Instead of taxing companies because it’s an easy method to steal money, maybe France should focus on enabling their people to create a company like Amazon or Facebook and actually generate wealth instead of taking it?
too hard
Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US
#395Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US
#396Earlier 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 Name one that has ever been repealed.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.
It's an easy question, have three.
Window tax. 1990s UK Poll tax. The luxury tax token system the US used before sales taxes.
Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
A tax on revenue is very different than a tax on profit.
A tax on profit is almost useless in this case because most internet giants would buy “services” or pay “royalties” to countries with zero taxes, to keep profits zero whereever there are nonzero taxes. A reasonable middle ground would be to tax google on their central profits and take a cut based on the fraction of business done in France. That way no tax would be owed if google makes a loss, regardless of French rev…
You can't just tax a company. Well, you could, but then you'd be a Libyan dictator or something.
Tax on revenue disincentivizes progress and R&D.
Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
Companies raise prices based on demand curve, not cost.
This is unequivocally false. A 3% increase could make their costs higher than revenue. They would increase their prices or go out of business.
> A 3% increase could make their costs higher than revenue.
This might be true for many businesses but likely not the large digital ones, which enjoy ungodly margins (hence why they grow so much and so quickly). A unicorn's back is strong enough to carry quite a few saddles.
Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US
#399Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
They can't spend it, or they can't spend it in the US?
Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US
#400I 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…
The thing the taxation is paying for is the French marketplace.
That place which is defended by the army, and wouldn't exist without schools, hospitals, and other services.