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France, Germany, Italy, Spain seek to base taxes on digital giants' revenues

reuters.com

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Re: France, Germany, Italy, Spain seek to base taxes on digital giants' revenues

#41

Post by usr1106 »

microcolonel wrote: post #24
the8472 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google benefits from approximately no government infrastructure in France, Germany, Italy, or Spain They directly depend on the infrastructure to reach their customers. And they indirectly depend on the people having a high standard of living which also requires infrastructure. If your country is a 3rd-world shithole without infrastructure you'll have a very hard time selling your products which sit high on maslow'…

Which infrastructure? What infrastructure in France, Germany, Italy, or Spain, which is used by Google to reach their customers, is built and/or maintained by the governments of those countries?

Infrastructure is a precondition for high economic activity and wealth. Without wealth Google, Amazon would have few customers in Germany, France, Spain.

These countries have mostly tax financed universities free or only with nominal tuitions for students. Without such education system the internet companies would have few customers wealthy enough to create a lot of profit for the company.

Re: France, Germany, Italy, Spain seek to base taxes on digital giants' revenues

#42

Post by open-source-ux »

cs702 wrote: post #23

I wonder what the impact will be on these companies' ability to compete against entrenched players in those EU countries. For example, will this make Amazon's prices non-competitive with European bricks-and-mortar retailers? I also wonder what the impact will be on their stock prices, because taxes on top-line revenues have a disproportionate impact on profit margins. For example, a 5% tax on revenues would render Am…

"...will this make Amazon's prices non-competitive"

Amazon UK book prices are mostly full-price outside of the bestseller lists. It's been like this for a while (but it wasn't of course how Amazon started). So you could argue their prices are already non-competitive for many books. It doesn't seems to matter though since all their rivals (who undercut Amazon book prices) are on Amazon marketplace anyway, so Amazon still gets a cut of the sale. Win-win for Amazon.

If you are in the UK, wordery.com is often a cheaper alternative than Amazon for many books. So is bookdepository.com, which is ironic given that it is owned by Amazon.

Re: France, Germany, Italy, Spain seek to base taxes on digital giants' revenues

#43

Post by anothersham »

eloff wrote: post #39
albertgoeswoof wrote: post #38

> A French court ruled in July French court ruled that Google, now part of Alphabet Inc, was not liable to pay 1.1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) in back taxes because it had no “permanent establishment” in France and ran its operations there from Ireland. How strange. I didn't know Google were an Irish company. I see them when I connect to the internet from all over the world. It looks like Airbnb also have their EMEA…

That's illegal for a person to do, but legal for these big companies. Don't blame the companies for exploiting loopholes. Blame the law. Fix the law.

So corporations are people only when it benefits them?

Re: France, Germany, Italy, Spain seek to base taxes on digital giants' revenues

#44

Post by gribbly »

eloff wrote: post #39
albertgoeswoof wrote: post #38

> A French court ruled in July French court ruled that Google, now part of Alphabet Inc, was not liable to pay 1.1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) in back taxes because it had no “permanent establishment” in France and ran its operations there from Ireland. How strange. I didn't know Google were an Irish company. I see them when I connect to the internet from all over the world. It looks like Airbnb also have their EMEA…

That's illegal for a person to do, but legal for these big companies. Don't blame the companies for exploiting loopholes. Blame the law. Fix the law.

Why do you think that law hasn't been fixed ...

Re: France, Germany, Italy, Spain seek to base taxes on digital giants' revenues

#45

Post by ithkuil »

alkonaut wrote: post #31
microcolonel wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which infrastructure? What infrastructure in France, Germany, Italy, or Spain, which is used by Google to reach their customers, is built and/or maintained by the governments of those countries?

Not sure I understand the question. Isn't that "most of it"? I use a road to get to work. My work pay my salary. My salary pays amazon for crap delivered to my house. The package comes delivered on the same road. The internet connection I used to visit amazons page is delivered via fiber to my house, funded just like other infrastructure. So the road and fiber was very important for my society being a developed high-…

All of those things you mentioned are already paid by somebody: the customer pays for your broadband and couriers pay for roads thorough their revenue taxes and tolls.

However, the topic here is the indirect benefit of being a wealthy nation where you can have customers wealthy enough to care about your products in the first place. The argument is that this is the result of something the society or the government did and it whoever benefits from that must pay their share for the access to that benefit, possibly to keep or improve the conditions that lead that wealth in the first place.

Re: France, Germany, Italy, Spain seek to base taxes on digital giants' revenues

#46

Post by andrepd »

ben_w wrote: post #35
andrepd wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decadent? I take issue. Google, like virtually every large corporation in the world, spends a significant amount of time and resources finding the optimal way to pay the least amount of taxes, through loopholes, borderline or actually illegal schemes, lobbying etc. We're supposed to blame the countries for being defrauded in this way, not the multinationals doing the defrauding? Come off it. You want to do business i…

I view tax codes like buggy software, lawful tax minimisation like zero day exploits — only difference is that the law is not above itself, so if the tax loophole is legal, then it's legal. That said, just because something is legal doesn't make it moral, but even though I think we agree on that, I'd have to argue loopholes are totally in the domain of legislators to fix — if I understand correctly, UK law requires t…

That's not a wholly correct interpretation. Law codes aren't rigorous; there's room for "interpreting" the law, and what really matters in the end is intent ("spirit of the law" > "letter of the law"). At any rate, the news is about "patching" the exploits.

Re: France, Germany, Italy, Spain seek to base taxes on digital giants' revenues

#47

Post by dogma1138 »

immad wrote: post #25
jeffwass wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many American companies (including most or all YC startups) do the same, incorporating in the low-tax state of Delaware for favourable tax treatment even though the company's offices and bulk of revenue-generation are elsewhere.

If you have headquarters in California you pay tax here as well as a bit in Delaware The reason to register in Delaware is because of business friendly courts there. I don't believe there is a tax advantage

The federal corporate tax can be up to 35%, which is the highest in the world outside of some literally banana republics.

Delaware has a corporate tax rate of 8.7%, California has 8.84.

So yes no one is incorporating in Delaware becuase of taxes, WA, TX, NV and a few others have zero corporate tax.

Re: France, Germany, Italy, Spain seek to base taxes on digital giants' revenues

#48

Post by pmontra »

microcolonel wrote: post #24
the8472 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google benefits from approximately no government infrastructure in France, Germany, Italy, or Spain They directly depend on the infrastructure to reach their customers. And they indirectly depend on the people having a high standard of living which also requires infrastructure. If your country is a 3rd-world shithole without infrastructure you'll have a very hard time selling your products which sit high on maslow'…

Which infrastructure? What infrastructure in France, Germany, Italy, or Spain, which is used by Google to reach their customers, is built and/or maintained by the governments of those countries?

For example schools, hospitals, roads. They are mostly public in maybe every single European state. Without them there are no literate healthy customers and no deliveries.

Re: France, Germany, Italy, Spain seek to base taxes on digital giants' revenues

#49

Post by lagadu »

microcolonel wrote: post #13
Oletros wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that Apple or Google don't operate in Spain or France? What the heck has to do your claim of Spain or France being corrupt with Apple or Google declaring losses with record revenues?

> Are you saying that Apple or Google don't operate in Spain or France? While technically they do have offices in Spain and France, they are mainly service offices. The critical operations of Google are carried out in the United States, and to a (far) lesser extent, Canada, Japan, and various other places. > What the heck has to do your claim of Spain or France being corrupt with Apple or Google declaring losses with…

> meanwhile the state is funneling public funds into things like a concentrated solar plant which will probably never generate more revenue than expenditure.

Erm the state isn't a for-profit entity, in fact if it were to generate a profit for some reason and didn't use that money to improve infrastructure and the living conditions of the people it represents then it would've stopped serving its purpose.

It doesn't matter that their investment doesn't generate revenue, it will improve the lives of the people it represents.

Re: France, Germany, Italy, Spain seek to base taxes on digital giants' revenues

#50

Post by wooter »

andrepd wrote: post #21
microcolonel wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you saying that Apple or Google don't operate in Spain or France? While technically they do have offices in Spain and France, they are mainly service offices. The critical operations of Google are carried out in the United States, and to a (far) lesser extent, Canada, Japan, and various other places. > What the heck has to do your claim of Spain or France being corrupt with Apple or Google declaring losses with…

> Spain, for example, has a rather meh economy, meanwhile the state is funneling public funds into things like a concentrated solar plant which will probably never generate more revenue than expenditure. If not corrupt, then that is at least decadent. I recommend you sit down, evaluate what you are saying, and try to figure out what on earth that has to do with corporate taxing.

How is that not clear to you?
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