Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

EU adopts global minimum 15% tax on big business

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 266 posts

Re: EU adopts global minimum 15% tax on big business

#71

Post by Jensson »

nonameiguess wrote: post #59
oliv__ wrote: post #6

"The US has not taken steps to adopt the rules so far, despite Ms Yellen's championship of the plan." Lol, obviously. Cheering them on as they shoot themselves in the foot

I wish the BBC would elaborate on what they mean by this. The US passed a 15% corporate minimum tax in August.

This isn't about getting all countries to put a 15% corporate tax, that will never happen. This is about increasing taxes on corporations even when they aren't headquartered there until their effective global tax becomes 15%, making it worthless for them to try to hide in tax havens.

Re: EU adopts global minimum 15% tax on big business

#72

Post by techpression »

Meanwhile the Swedish government is giving massive incentives to Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft to build data centers (and I assume other countries do too). Almost zero taxing on electricity and actual monetary payouts.

In other words, this is a bit of a headline without any actual teeth (there’s plenty of ways to compete unfairly), which is the problem when you start wanting to govern the world, you can’t cover all the bases.

Re: EU adopts global minimum 15% tax on big business

#73

Post by poszlem »

jameshart wrote: post #63
poszlem wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit of both. I don't mind corps being taxed if that's what a country wants to do. I do have a problem with making this a "global government mandated" thing though. And as I mentioned in other comments, I despise the revival of the communist vocabulary ("reactionary", "bourgeois", "social justice", "equity").

Survivors of an abusive relationship might struggle with the fact that their partner told them that they ‘loved’ them, and yet that supposed love took the form of cruelty and abuse. They might struggle to trust anybody else who talks about ‘love’. But that doesn’t mean that other people who use the word ‘love’ are secret abusers.

That is true, but there are certain "red flags" that you will hear from most abusers. In the case of governments one of those is "we do it for social justice [not normal justice]".

Re: EU adopts global minimum 15% tax on big business

#74

Post by wernercd »

toast0 wrote: post #54
torben-friis wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely if, say, netflix is offered to french costumers profit is made in france?

Why should the profit be made in france if the engineering that went into delivery was made in the US, the content was made in X, the deal for the content was negotiated in Y, network source is Z (probably france, but not necessarily) VAT in France on the subscription makes sense, but figuring out where the profit lies, is more nebulous.

If you offer a service in France, charge $10 and pay %15 on that $10... then when that money makes it into the US and Netflix has to decide what the profit is (after server fees, electricity, content fees, paying off politicians, etc)?

Not sure but I'm seeing 2 different conversations here: flat tax on what you pay at the pump... and what the company reports as profit at the end of the day.

France doesn't care if you make a profit or not on the 8.50... just like Apple doens't care when they take 30% off the top.

Am I reading it wrong? Is it 15% off the top ala Apple Store? or 15% off of profits? both of which are different conversations.

Looking at the article, it seems like a nothing burger until it's voted in officially... The Paris Accord was "passed"... and then left because it was just a verbal agreement. What's enforcing this and stopping the next POTUS from leaving it all together?

Re: EU adopts global minimum 15% tax on big business

#75

Post by Jensson »

poszlem wrote: post #68
Negitivefrags wrote: post #33

I don't really like this kind of idea because it really goes against a kind of fundemental freedom. "If you don't like it, you can leave". Instead, laws around making sure that the profits generated from a countries citizens are taxed by that country make more sense to me. A lot of laws around that already exist, and I suppose a lot of people would say that they have not been effective. A lot of it comes down to the…

I wholeheartedly agree with this, and I think the idea "If you don't like it, you can leave" is one of the most important, if not THE most important freedom a person should have. It's the reason why former communist countries took passports away from their citizens. It's the idea that we know what's best for you and you better adapt because there is no escaping. It's the fundamental idea of many social justice moveme…

You can leave, but corporate profits can't leave, that is the idea. I don't see why corporate profits leaving the country they were generated in is necessary for freedom.

Re: EU adopts global minimum 15% tax on big business

#77

Post by baal80spam »

poszlem wrote: post #42
vkou wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're going to listen to reactionary wisdom of folk sayings, I've got a long, long list of ones that will provide us with all sorts of simple-to-grok, contradictory, and utterly pointless advice for how to steer our politics. And this particular one works just fine if you reverse the adjectives. After all, the justice system is generally the one responsible for executing people. It does tend to apply itself in a r…

It's kind on interesting that the word "reactionary" is also really disliked in Poland too (alongside with the likes of "comrade"). Both of those (plus "social justice") have been used to silence and oppress there. It's really disheartening to see that kind of vocabulary coming back to fashion in English.

Another one is "collaboration". As someone working in IT, I had a hard time getting used to it meaning "work with your peers toward the common goal". In Poland it has a completely different (negative) meaning.

Re: EU adopts global minimum 15% tax on big business

#78

Post by rsj_hn »

poszlem wrote: post #56
rsj_hn wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call a 15% tax on corporations "communism". The actual policy objective is reasonable even if many can argue both sides with rational debate. The main problem is this idea that a bunch of people on the liberal side of the Western world can create "global goals" and try to strong arm the rest of the world into following, which then leads to the inevitable outrage and disappointment when the rest of the worl…

It being a "global goal" is exactly what I don't like. I don't especially care if a country wants to tax their citizens whatever high. My problem is only when we reach a state of a "global government" deciding what's best for specific countries.

There is really not much to look forward to in Europe besides trying to police others.

Re: EU adopts global minimum 15% tax on big business

#79

Post by woodruffw »

leereeves wrote: post #53
woodruffw wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay. In that case the cutoff was around $80,000 in today's money, which is certainly not poor (but not rich either).

Top three percent is fairly rich. > The Revenue Act of 1913 ... established a one percent tax on income above $3,000 per year; the tax affected approximately three percent of the population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1913

Not in absolute terms: the fact that 97% of Americans in 1913 made less than $80,000 equivalent per year is more a testament to America (and broadly the world's) staggering poverty relative to our current wealth.

Put another way: you can't tax destitute people (at least not for long, and not without losing your head), but can absolutely can tax the average American household in 2021[1].

[1]: https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-27...

Re: EU adopts global minimum 15% tax on big business

#80

Post by rnk »

jacooper wrote: post #3
mytailorisrich wrote: post #2

> European leaders praised the decision, with Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz describing it as a "project close to my heart". French President Emmanuel Macron said the country had been pushing the idea for more than four years. Of course countries with high taxes are all for raising taxes in countries where they are lower! Now, unfortunately the article does not mention the interesting bit, which is that EU countrie…

More money for the government, why would they refuse ?

At a certain point, where you have such different views in countries like Hungary (Hungary wants to placate Russia or something similar leading to not helping Ukraine, wants to block Finland and Sweden from Nato, wants to disable/reduce/destroy democracy in Hungary, wants all that stimulus money from the EU to keep coming in), we just have to say we'll go our way, you go yours. Unity required for so many decisions means the extreme minority of 1 can extract too much. Similar thing for Turkey and Nato.

Either that, or the groups (EU, NATO) will have to change their rules to allow a few no votes on things, or they'll just become broken orgs. I'm sure Russia would offer almost anything to the wanna-be dictators in Turkey and Hungary to get them to vote no on these things. These "complete agreement" democratic groups don't work when some leaders are dictators.

Post reply on HN