61–70 of 88 posts
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That's simple..how many times has a state caused it's own anarchy/civil war through politics or corruption?
There a few places you can go with no little to no government if that's what you prefer. I guarantee you'll be crying to come home in short order though.
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Taxing Google and Facebook is not pushing British or French population closer to that breaking point.
Costs get passed on to buyers and eventually to consumers. They might get diluted along the way but they do get passed on.
EDIT: downvoting me doesn't change the fact that those 2 don't make their money by charging you and me their users, they charge advertisers who want to show us ads and get our data. If a cost needs to be passed on, it will be passed on them.
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>Countries do not need a rationale for taxes as long as they stay consistent in their law Legally speaking, sure. Morally speaking, it's not so clear. Wars have been started because the rulers subscribed too heavily to your line of reasoning. Being taxed into oblivion is generally considered a damn good reason to kick out the current government, peacefully at first but violently if necessary. While I don't think Brit…
Taxing Google and Facebook is not pushing British or French population closer to that breaking point.
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I love paying to maintain a stable society. There are many players involved in stable societies, governments being a tiny one. I dont enjoy paying the organization I participate in solely to avoid theft by others turning around and committing theft against me with the very liberties and money I gave up to it to avoid this outcome. That's just overreach by simple, short sighted people.
The government is by far the largest player in society, employing anywhere from 15-35% of the population and organizing and regulating the services needed for our very survival, including transportation (because private citizens don't build highways), electricity and water (because even if privatized the state provides the legal framework for privatization and service level agreements) and a myriad things for which y…
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The issue isn’t so much any anti-competitive misbehavior. Even though there are some specific practices that have landed FAANG in hot waters, those aren’t really different from any other companies’ of similar size. Monopolization just happens to be the natural state of any system that has network effects and where all costs are front-loaded (I. e. write the code once, scale to billions of users at, if you squint, zer…
A digital tax is basically an equivalent to custom tax. Goods like German cars have to pay custom taxes during importing them to the US. A Netflix stream from the US to Germany not. And that is getting fixed. But it is fair to say: this is not only about taxes. This is also about countries gain control over global economy.
There's so many things I have to pay 20-30% more for in Canada (for ex: $150 for shoes that are $100 in the US) for ridiculous protective import policies for old non-core industries that do little to help the economy.
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The government is by far the largest player in society, employing anywhere from 15-35% of the population and organizing and regulating the services needed for our very survival, including transportation (because private citizens don't build highways), electricity and water (because even if privatized the state provides the legal framework for privatization and service level agreements) and a myriad things for which y…
You say that like it's a good thing. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18863496
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You say that like it's a good thing. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18863496
Given that the vast majority of government employment happens in education, health care, transportation services and utilities, the part where "large government" is of actual concern to me has _very_ little to do with its actual cash flow and employment numbers and a lot to do with crappy regulatory environments.
It's not like you are going to go on and argue it's efficient or something...
This is all rather moot. The EU's days are numbered.
The best traditional HN bad car analogy I can provide is Illinois State DOR is angry the new car factories are relocated in the rural south where the property taxes are low and what tax they do pay goes to the locals and not Illinois DOR, and they're selling those "foreign" cars in Illinois, so Illinois is going to add a special registration tax for cars registered but not manufactured in Illinois. This is kinda a ba…
The no physical existence loop hole is one worth closing, if you sell goods or services it should be taxed within the authority the sale occurs. That is common sense. However the second issue, what is digital and what isn't and how it can be taxed outside of the same point is a bit worrying, it basically sounds like, if we don't think you pay enough even following the rules you will pay this too.
just watch for the exceptions to pile on because you can guarantee members of the G20 will put them in there, similar to how states and cities whack large chains by looking at their full sales corporate wide instead of local sales.
"The U.S. government has voiced concern in the past that the European campaign for a “digital tax” unfairly targets U.S. tech giants." How about admitting that the U.S. tech giants unfairly use their monopolistic powers because the Internet has become a winner-takes-it-all economy.
If instead of making it more difficult to build technology products, Europe focused on making it easier maybe the would be able to provide some much needed competition to the US tech scene. They seem more determined to tear down value than create it though. In the end, it will be their own citizens suffering though lack of tech jobs available in their market (c.f. the going rate for a full time engineer in the US vs Europe), lack of innovative tech that caters to local needs and ultimately lack of tax revenue from local companies.
"Britain and France have been among the most vocal proponents of proposals to tax big" This is kind of surprising in case of Britain. As long as I remember both Cayman islands and City of London, two of the best known tax havens, are British territories so Britain could prevent tax evasion easily. When it comes to "taxing" those pesky Facebooks and Netflix globally, I am not sure I understand justification for this.…
In the case of sales this would be more clear cut. But Facebook profits from user in a country through ads, which do not necessarily need to be purchased in that country. It's just that these things antecedes the internet and the omnipresence of digital goods and services.