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Amazon and Starbucks pay less tax than sausage stall, says Austria

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Amazon and Starbucks pay less tax than sausage stall, says Austria

#81

Post by rayiner »

gutnor wrote: post #80
rayiner wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tax attorney thing is a red herring. Wal-Mart averaged a 29% tax rate from 2008 to 2012--higher than your average American and much higher than companies like Apple and Google. You think Wal-Mart can't afford good tax lawyers? Or to lobby aggressively for tax breaks? No, the problem both Wal-Mart and the local sausage cart have is they're "meat space" businesses. They can't shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions…

Apple and Google don't really compete with Walmart, so that's acceptable ( but not good ! ) What is really not acceptable is that a small company will pay 1 or 2 order of magnitude more tax than the giant they directly compete against.

But the sausage cart isn't going to be paying more than Wal Mart.

Re: Amazon and Starbucks pay less tax than sausage stall, says Austria

#82

Post by kuschku »

davidf18 wrote: post #67
rayiner wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tax attorney thing is a red herring. Wal-Mart averaged a 29% tax rate from 2008 to 2012--higher than your average American and much higher than companies like Apple and Google. You think Wal-Mart can't afford good tax lawyers? Or to lobby aggressively for tax breaks? No, the problem both Wal-Mart and the local sausage cart have is they're "meat space" businesses. They can't shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions…

The countries simply need to hire higher competent people to construct their laws including addressing those newer types of firms such as Apple and Google. Since Wal-Mart and Starbucks are both "brick and mortar" it seems strange that Starbucks can have favorable taxes but not Wal-Mart. Countries simply need to hire very competent people to construct the laws. Their problems with taxes is one of market competition fo…

Or they should, like France, enforce the spirit of the law, not the letter of the law.

Re: Amazon and Starbucks pay less tax than sausage stall, says Austria

#83

Post by lhopki01 »

gozur88 wrote: post #59
greyman wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what can you do if countries like Ireland or Malta just allows tax evasion?

This was always the Achilles heel of the EU. In the end it can't work unless tax policies are harmonized.

The way the US won't work unless tax policies are harmonised between states.....oh wait.

Re: Amazon and Starbucks pay less tax than sausage stall, says Austria

#84

Post by pyre »

tedmiston wrote: post #23
kijeda wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it has changed recently, but an interesting factor is the Austrian Starbucks have been run by an Austrian master franchisor, not by the company.

This is interesting because Starbucks doesnt franchise in the US [0]. They do have one alternative that's what you see in most airports and in coffee shops with the sign "proudly serving Starbucks coffee", for example Barnes & Noble cafes are this style. These third party stores, for instance, cannot accept payment from the Starbucks mobile app and offer only a subset of drinks. I'm not sure what the term for this is…

I talked with a girl that worked at a Starbucks in a Fred Meyers in Oregon. They are technically Fred Meyers' employees, but the deal with Starbucks includes things like the fact that they cannot wear anything except the Starbucks uniforms. On Halloween, Fred Meyers' employees are allowed to wear costumes... except for the ones that man the Starbucks because of the deal.

Re: Amazon and Starbucks pay less tax than sausage stall, says Austria

#85

Post by gozur88 »

lhopki01 wrote: post #83
gozur88 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was always the Achilles heel of the EU. In the end it can't work unless tax policies are harmonized.

The way the US won't work unless tax policies are harmonised between states.....oh wait.

Oh wait. The difference is there's no EU-wide corporate tax, whereas US federal corporate taxes are relatively large compared to the state levies. So there's a much larger incentive for companies to seek out EU states that are willing to undercut their neighbors.

Re: Amazon and Starbucks pay less tax than sausage stall, says Austria

#86

Post by mschwaig »

hga wrote: post #15
mschwaig wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to pay tax lawyers that are so great that you basically don't have to pay taxes kind of breaks the concept of taxation though.

Or this is a establishment politician with a weak hold on power who has not necessarily got his facts right, or if he's talking about absolute numbers vs. rates is probably lying through his teeth, but knows bashing foreign companies is a crowd pleaser. And maybe they overtax those sausage stalls, lots of/most every? country has tax regimes with lots of insanity. Apple wouldn't be playing the games it plays with the…

So your parents payed more than they had to by not gaming the system as much as they could have, because they are good people, and maybe apple would also 'play nice' if the coroprate tax rate wasn't that high. I believe that in reality if you're an individual you should pay your taxes where you live, to the gouvernment that provides its services to you, and if you don't like their deal you should try to emigrate. Similarly as a business you should be properly taxed in each market that you're operating in. All of this shouldn't depend on bargining and good will. There's no use in talking about tax rates as long as we only pay them out of the kindness of our hearts and they don't apply to all the big fish anyways.

Re: Amazon and Starbucks pay less tax than sausage stall, says Austria

#87

Post by skafjvhs »

peletiah wrote: post #30
skafjvhs wrote: post #27

Something about this story seems off to me. >Mr Kern, who heads Austria's Social Democrats and the country's coalition government, also said Facebook and Google had sales of more than 100m euros each in Austria. I'm not an expert on Austria but this suggests to me that this person can propose and possibly pass laws in Austria. He is not just an activist who only has the power to give interviews to BBC. If he thinks t…

Kern only came into power in May, the social-democrats (SPÖ) have been in a "great coalition" with christian-democrats (ÖVP) since 2007. This coalition has been on rickety legs for many years now and there's not much the two parties agree on. There have been no noteworthy reforms for a decade. There's also the threat of the populist far-right FPÖ, which has been gaining power again after two failed coalitions with th…

Thanks for the context, it's very useful.

From a US perspective, it's common for our top politicians, when talking about a problem, to present a specific proposal for legislation they would use to fix the problem. It makes their words more credible to me. It is easy to complain that things are bad, harder to describe in detail how things could be better. To be cynical, these plans are written by staffers and the politician may just memorize the key points. But it at least demonstrates there is some commitment to the issue.

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