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

bbc.com

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

#461

Post by cryptica »

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…

Corporations are terrible for many reasons.

- They have a monopolostic unfair advantage over some market which means that they can be very innefficient and still survive. They hinder real innovation.

- As stated in the article, they often pay little to no tax because of their accounting practices; they get all the legal benefits of being treated as an independent entity under the law but none of the costs.

- They are constantly lobbying politicians to change the laws to benefit them at the expense of tax payers.

- As a consequence of being well promoted on various stock markets, corporations tend to get a lot of easy money from investors; these investors include large 401k and superanuation funds which invest money into stocks without the knowledge of the regular working people whose salaries are paying for it. A lot of the new money which the Fed creates goes straight to corporations because of this.

- Corporations are also bad because they hurt free speech and they have the power to manipulate the elections by coercing their employees. The people who control corporations think in black and white and simplistic terms. They think they have all the answers to our socioeconomic problems. They don't understand that they are the problem. They don't understand that fairness is very difficult to achieve and that huge centralized power concentrated in the hands of a tiny number of financially incentivised decision makers opens up massive cracks (blind spots) in the system for the majority of people to fall through.

IMO, you cannot tax them enough. This is a great bold move by the French government. It's great to see a country in which democracy still works for the people.

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

#462

Post by de_watcher »

colpabar wrote: post #271
jwr wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Also, those large tech companies can sell to French customers because French customers have money to buy from them.…

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

> a company might just raise their prices to pay for those taxes

Amazon will rise prices? That will be just wealth redistribution from rich through Amazon and taxes to poor who are going to buy local potatoes.

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

#463

Post by manfredo »

colechristensen wrote: post #456
manfredo wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They still pay taxes, though, even if politicians did set a lower rate for a period of time. If they bring the money back in to pay back the loans they'll pay taxes on it. You call this a "scam" when in reality it's the system working as designed, so I don't think you have a particularly good grasp on this subject. Again, in most countries companies don't pay taxes on foreign income at all .

The personal slight isn't necessary. Things are indeed working as designed, designed by the people who it benefits through regulatory capture, lobbying, and campaign finance, that part shouldn't be hard to understand. If it were "working as designed" there wouldn't be a trend of global cooperation in closing these tax loopholes and you wouldn't be reading an article about France working to close one. >If they bring t…

> Would that it were we all could avoid our financial obligations and paying our fair share long as we did so eventually while being called heroic.

Again, most countries - including most European countries - don't Levy taxes on foreign company earnings at all. If Google were not a US company, they wouldn't be taxed on any foreign earnings even without any kind of money parking abroad.

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

#464

Post by Vinnl »

M2Ys4U wrote: post #433
Vinnl wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there are no alternative to AWS, Google Adsense, or an American SaaS in France; the French people will be paying all of the tax. The big tech giants will just slap them with a 3% surcharge for being in France. Just like VAT is passed on to consumers? I don't think the goal is to make specific companies pay; rather, the goal is to have every type of economic activity to contribute a fair share to the society they…

>Just like VAT is passed on to consumers? VAT is a consumption tax. It is - by definition - only paid by consumers.

Exactly. Yet VAT is a thing, and consumers are doing fine.

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

#465

Post by pas »

manfredo wrote: post #341
calcifer wrote: post #303

Earlier 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 don't have to "spend" it. They invest the money. Then the investment vehicle uses the money (now not directly tied to the foreign earning) to fund projects anywhere around the world. (For example in the US too.)

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

#466

Post by DocTomoe »

kemiller wrote: post #440
fuzz4lyfe wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Markets exist without governments and often despite them (see the illegal drug trade for an example) but I have never seen a successful government without markets. You may have the causation backwards.

Black markets exist, but they pay a different sort of tax: the muscle and violent losses required to keep their property. Lawful governments do that better, and that’s what taxes pay for. Google and Facebook have access to the legal system in France, not to mention the wires that run the internet itself. You can argue about what the optimal taxation scheme is but arguing that it’s not necessary, or that the internet…

I fail to see the qualitative difference between

a) Don Vito sending goons with guns to hurt and/or kill me if I don't pay protection money and

b) "The lawful government" sending people with guns to arrest me if I don't pay taxes (and potentially kill me if I should refuse arrest).

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

#467

Post by IshKebab »

buboard wrote: post #91
SiempreViernes wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you just ignore to comment on the justification given: that big tech companies engage in blatant tax evasion.

not sure what you mean

He's saying that this tax exists because large tech companies are in a position to easily evade the taxes that most businesses have to pay.

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

#468

Post by lotsofpulp »

nickserv wrote: post #417
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 would consider myself both. It's true that in the US, the average person sees very little benefit to federal taxes. Most real, helpful things such as police, roads, schools and such are perceived to be only from local or possibly state taxes. This is not entirely true of course since Federal taxes do help for education and roads notably, but I would say that most people don't really think about it that way. There's…

>It's true that in the US, the average person sees very little benefit to federal taxes.

I disagree with this. The US’s civil service organizations have immeasurably improved the quality of lives of everyone. Organizations like FDA/FAA/CDC/FCC/NASA/research at universities/Civil Engineering Corp/Transportation/judiciary/etc are crucial to advancing society and most importantly, the people in these organizations are by and large not corrupted, which is a very under appreciated assets and once lost, will be extremely hard to earn back. Obviously there are and will be a few bad actors, but the reason people don’t have to worry about bribing/violence/etc is that there is a higher level of trust in society and not everyone is out to get theirs before someone else takes it.

Once that attitude changes for most people, I don’t see how it will be possible to get it back.

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

#469

Post by colechristensen »

manfredo wrote: post #463
colechristensen wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The personal slight isn't necessary. Things are indeed working as designed, designed by the people who it benefits through regulatory capture, lobbying, and campaign finance, that part shouldn't be hard to understand. If it were "working as designed" there wouldn't be a trend of global cooperation in closing these tax loopholes and you wouldn't be reading an article about France working to close one. >If they bring t…

> Would that it were we all could avoid our financial obligations and paying our fair share long as we did so eventually while being called heroic. Again, most countries - including most European countries - don't Levy taxes on foreign company earnings at all. If Google were not a US company, they wouldn't be taxed on any foreign earnings even without any kind of money parking abroad.

What's your point?

If I lived in Nevada instead of California I wouldn't have to pay state income tax so by your logic I should just stop paying?

Once companies get big enough they get to arbitrarily choose which sets of laws to follow?

People don't have to pay for groceries at food banks so we can walk around the checkouts at Safeway?

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

#470

Post by colechristensen »

alistairSH wrote: post #399
manfredo wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They can't move it into a US bank without paying taxes on it.

They can do convoluted accounting with loans and subsidiaries and the like to bring it into the country anyway with the unwinding and tax paying left into the far future.

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