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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

#481

Post by ahje »

bitwize wrote: post #200
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…

The idea behind taxation is "the government needs money to function, and it alone has the authority to take it by force". Anything else is a post hoc justification.

Exactly. The French government decided that businesses should be taxed for profits made from French consumers. Some businesses found a loop hole using the laws of other EU countries to avoid paying those taxes, and now the government of France decided to plug that loop hole simply because they have the will and the way.

There's not really anything else to it.

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

#482

Post by magduf »

buboard wrote: post #431
magduf wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google provides some genuinely useful services, like Maps. Facebook, on the other hand, isn't something that anyone really needs . What value does Facebook actually provide anyway, besides giving people a forum to post boring family photos for grandma to look at? I guess Facebook Marketplace can be sorta useful for selling your old junk, but that's the only thing that comes to mind. Remember also that there's only tw…

Facebook provides the great service of keeping them all over there. Imagine if all that crowd descended on HN.

Don't be silly. Even if FB disappeared tomorrow, "that crowd" isn't going to come to HN, just like they're not going to suddenly develop an interest in, say, electronics and start hanging out on message forums where people talk about how to design PCBs, or an interest in, say, astrophysics, and start hanging out on message forums where people talk about gravity wave detection.

No matter what happens to FB, you're safe here.

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

#483

Post by gourou »

umeshunni wrote: post #6

Interestingly, the only recent French tech company to be even remotely globally relevant (Criteo), is also affected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_of_France is a good list to look at. There is only one other software/internet company founded in France since 2000 in the 'Notable' list - 360Learning. About a third of the list was founded before 1900. A very different list than what you'd see in the US…

France is an ecosystem where smaller (tech) companies get acquired by massive conglomerates (Vivendi, LVMH...). Or more recently like Zenly's acquisition by Snapchat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivendi https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/21/snapchat-buys-zenly/

While there are some French tech unicorns (BlaBlaCar, Criteo, Veepee, Doctolib) a lot of French founders just create their company in the US (Docker, Lending Club, Wit-AI) because the labor code is simpler and there are more VC funds.

The current administration is trying to change that with Station F and by making it easier to get foreign workers visas but it's a long shot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Station_F

https://visa.lafrenchtech.com/

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

#484

Post by cyrksoft »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #455
cyrksoft wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“For the benefit of the society” How would you measure that? Does paying more for a worse product and raising the price of the better one benefits society? If the product was better it would already be in the market.

How much oil has been burned without paying for its environmental costs? Does that make it a better product? That’s the point. Cheaper does not necessarily mean better.

We are not talking about environmental externalities here. That’s another issue altogether. B

What are the negative externalities of AWS and the likes?

You cannot compare pears with apples.

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

#485

Post by repolfx »

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…

The companies that create the wires are already taxed in France. Having "access" to those wires seems a poor basis for taxation - that would imply the whole world should pay the French government tax merely for the privilege of France existing and being connected to the internet at all.

As for access to the legal system? As far as I can tell this is a net negative for them. All I ever hear about around the combination of FAANG+European courts is rather overreaching and abusive attempts to force them to pay lots of money or do lots of things that were never previously required and arguably still aren't under law. I'm sure they would happily lose "access" to the French courts if it meant not paying taxes there - the flow of legislation is so overwhelmingly one way.

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

#486

Post by repolfx »

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…

"In general Swedes accept taxes" overlooks some rather important facts.

Firstly, "in general" is very vague. There are famous cases of rich Swedes who don't want to pay Swedish taxes and successfully avoid doing so. IKEA's tax structure is legendary isn't it?

Secondly, Sweden has cut taxes in the recent past:

https://iea.org.uk/blog/how-high-tax-sweden-abolished-its-di...

Obviously many Swedes weren't happy with high tax rates.

In this very left-wing article about how Swedes love paying very high tax rates, it is observed:

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2008/nov/16/sweden-tax-bur...

'The median voter is a woman who works for the public sector, and around two-thirds of the electorate draw most of their income from the state, either because they work in the public sector or draw benefits from it.'

So yes the average Swede is a net recipient of tax money and is thus going to think taxes are awesome. Obviously in a world where a minority are forced to pay for the living costs of the majority, "in general" the population will believe it's a good system. But is a good idea or sustainable over the long term, let alone moral?

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

#487

Post by tim333 »

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…

>The idea behind taxes is that you use some public resource and you pay for that service

That's not the main way taxes work. Typically the government raises taxes from the well off to subsidise things like roads schools healthcare and welfare. So say a well paid developer may have to pay tax and it gets used to house a homeless person or bomb Syria. The fact that the developer is not homeless or wanting to bomb places is not a showstopper.

Paying for services you use is more just paying for stuff.

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

#488

Post by manfredo »

colechristensen wrote: post #469
manfredo wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> 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?

No, my point is that Californians shouldn't point to Nevada and say they're not paying their fair share of taxes.

Google isn't dodging any French taxes, and isn't dodging American taxes either. What people are complaining about is the fact that American companies' foreign earnings aren't taxes until those earnings are brought into the country. This is not against the law, since companies aren't forced to move that money back into the country. And to put the cherry on top, most countries don't tax companies on foreign earnings at all.

So France is trying to say that they are being disadvantaged because these companies are delaying payment of American taxes, on earnings that wouldn't be taxed at all in France or most other European countries. This is blatant hypocrisy. France is complaining that American isn collecting taxes too slowly on earnings that it and it's peers don't tax at all. If European countries think corporations should pay taxes on foreign earnings, maybe they should begin with taxing their own corporations' foreign earnings first.

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

#489

Post by jadel »

repolfx wrote: post #486
bjelkeman-again wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"In general Swedes accept taxes" overlooks some rather important facts. Firstly, "in general" is very vague. There are famous cases of rich Swedes who don't want to pay Swedish taxes and successfully avoid doing so. IKEA's tax structure is legendary isn't it? Secondly, Sweden has cut taxes in the recent past: https://iea.org.uk/blog/how-high-tax-sweden-abolished-its-di... Obviously many Swedes weren't happy with high…

That isn't really how the Swedish tax system works. A lot of that is paying yourself in one form or another.

The problem in Sweden is that if you for example you get $500k from you parents, buy an apartment that appreciates, go study for five years, have a kid and take parental leave for another two years you pay maybe 10-20% tax overall (on the appreciation mostly) and nothing for health care or education for yourself or your kids, which might go to semi private school.

While the average person who don't have rich parents, or maybe kids, and are trying to work their way up are paying 40-50% or more on their income and not getting much in return. And on top of that are paying for some of the highest property values and general prices in Europe.

Stockholm built the most expensive hospital in the world, yet has one of the lowest tax rates in the country.

I don't mind paying taxes, but I want them to be put to good use and not be some sort of discount system for those who are already well off so they can take more vacations. (I do realize that their is a lot of history behind that, but it is now getting warped into some form of crony capitalism).

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

#490

Post by kjsbfkjbf »

DocTomoe wrote: post #466
kemiller wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Possibly because there isn't. The police were created to be state-sanctioned goons.
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