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France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US
471–480 of 501 posts
Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US
#472Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are no freedom of speech laws that would apply to a corporation rather than a human, that I know of at least.
Newspapers etc. regularly use Article 10 (freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights to protect their ability to publish.
That freedom of expression is for the journalists, not the newspaper - that is my point.
Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US
#473Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> You can’t tax a company
Not sure I follow
Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US
#474Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
And yet they couldn't find a way to have both without imposing this tax.
Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US
#475Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Are you sure it's "an unfair advantage" and not just "an advantage"? Doesn't your position presume that the brick-and-mortar business model deserves special protection? If so, why? Because it employs more people and pays taxes locally. It's perfectly valid for the government to ignore that and focus solely on the consumer side (i.e. minimize prices), but it's also perfectly valid (and economically sound) to do what…
> > Doesn't this all point to a fundamental problem with "corporate tax"? Wouldn't it be better (fairer) to reduce or remove corporate tax and raise sales tax or similar, such that it doesn't matter whether the business has a presence in the country in question? Well, now you run into the problem of progressive vs regressive taxation. Since consumption taxes, as the name implies, tax consumption, and the poor have a…
I think you meant to respond to me as the quoted portion is mine. Anyway, this is a really interesting perspective that I hadn’t considered. Is this a pretty accepted perspective on consumption tax? If no, what is the counterargument?
Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US
#476Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is actually a good idea: increase tax on revenues for companies using tax-evasion schemes until it is no longuer profitable for them to continue doing so. Also, consider the fact that tax evasion is a crime in most countries and that this is a very bland measure when compared to what these companies (and their executives) really reserve.
increasing taxes makes tax-reduction-strategies _more_ profitable, not less also, tax-evasion and tax-reduction are two different things, equating them is an argument in bad faith
What I was arguing is that raising taxes revenues instead of profits (when companies declare no profits as part of tax-avoidance schemes) will eventually make them declare and pay taxes on real profits.
You have a point here, but what really is at stake here is tax-evasion, not reduction.
The company declares no profits in France (and thus pays no tax) because its profit is fraudulently passed as costs to pay for IP or services for the mother company in another country.
Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US
#477Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 b…
I completely agree, my wording was perhaps ambiguous.
What I meant was that the average person doesn't perceive it as such, IOW they don't see the benefits of the Federal government, which is not to say that there are no benefits for the average person.
This is probably because there is a lack of publicity about how these types of programs improve people's daily lives.
Instead we get a lot of politicians talking about how wasteful these are, or how it's part of the nanny state, or stifling growth by taxes.
And the media doesn't generally oppose this viewpoint... As a example, I remember during the Democrat debate in Miami where Sanders was not asked how his healthcare would help people, but whether it would raise taxes.
Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US
#478Earlier 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…
Who do you think built most of the historical (56k & ADSL) network in France?
The French government.
As for expanding into "3rd world" markets, the average monthly Senegalese salary appears to be 139€. And this is a country considered to be doing well in the region.
They're expanding and offering "free internet" because there's nowhere else to go. Because even though it's poor now, there's growth, and they want to be established and deeply encroached when those markets will become worth it. Because they believe better and wider internet coverage will spur even more growth.
The only reason these companies can exist and be worth anything today is because of all the groundwork and investment that has been and continuously is made.
Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US
#479I 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…
How much do most uneducated people in most of the world make?
How much do most uneducated people in mostly uneducated markets make?
How much disposable income do they have?
How much are they worth to advertisers and sellers such as Amazon?
Pretty much nothing.
And that's just for the schools part.
Re: France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US
#480Earlier quoted context omitted.
increasing taxes makes tax-reduction-strategies _more_ profitable, not less also, tax-evasion and tax-reduction are two different things, equating them is an argument in bad faith
What I was arguing is that raising taxes revenues instead of profits (when companies declare no profits as part of tax-avoidance schemes) will eventually make them declare and pay taxes on real profits. You have a point here, but what really is at stake here is tax-evasion, not reduction. The company declares no profits in France (and thus pays no tax) because its profit is fraudulently passed as costs to pay for IP…
What you call fraudulent is not actually fraudulent. It makes a lot of sense to allow this.
If a US company develops IP in the US, is it not normal that they then get to charge a royalty for use of said IP globally?
If a French company develops IP in France, is it not normal that they then get to charge a royalty for use of said IP globally?
If you have a centralised office somewhere supplying back office services to all entities within Europe, does it not make sense to allow companies to tax deduct these expenses?
It seems like an easy thing to fix, but it's not. Particularly because multinationals _do_ actually operate in many countries and can pick where to base their operations.