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

G7: Rich nations back deal to tax multinationals

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 931 posts

Re: G7: Rich nations back deal to tax multinationals

#81

Post by tomp »

amelius wrote: post #6
orf wrote: post #2

Summary: > Firstly, the G7 want a global minimum tax rate so as to avoid a "race to the bottom" where countries can undercut each other with low tax rates. > Secondly, the rules will aim to make companies pay tax in the countries where they are selling their products or services, rather than wherever they end up declaring their profits. Good. It’s a shame that Biden had to back down from the initial 28% because of do…

> Firstly, the G7 want a global minimum tax rate so as to avoid a "race to the bottom" where countries can undercut each other with low tax rates. Why is this necessary, if countries can just tax companies based on the money they made in their country ?

Where is the money made?

Take Apple selling phones in the UK. Is the money made in the UK, where the phones are sold? Maybe part of it (selling phones), but Apple enjoys a large premium over Android, and that's more debatable. Was the money made in Taiwan, where iPhones are made? Or in California, where iPhone was invented? Personally, I don't really see why UK would tax Apple more than Android makers, simply because Apple (from California) was more inventive... while the profits were realized in the UK, they weren't created in the UK.

Re: G7: Rich nations back deal to tax multinationals

#82

Post by peteretep »

loxs wrote: post #69
peteretep wrote: post #36

Irish are gonna be pissed. Also and not ironically, what a huge win for the workers over capital.

Such a huge win, now poorer countries will get even poorer.

I think you are misinformed about the level of corp tax in most poor countries. Twenty countries have corp tax less than 15%, of which about half are poor. 15 have no corporate tax and are either rich or are just unambiguous tax havens.

Average corp tax in Africa and South America is 28%, Europe and Asia are 20%.

https://taxfoundation.org/publications/corporate-tax-rates-a...

Re: G7: Rich nations back deal to tax multinationals

#83

Post by lotsofpulp »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #71
hliyan wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good. I didn't think such a global minimum was politically possible. There was recently an article on HN where the author claimed that high tax rates don't impact high net worth individuals because they have already made their money. It just makes it harder for others to join the club. Perhaps what we need is a global maximum wealth (rather than income) cap, as a multiple of global median per-capita wealth. Perhaps s…

The secret of high net worth individuals is they don't own anything and they don't earn anything.

What?

Re: G7: Rich nations back deal to tax multinationals

#84

Post by greenwich26 »

csomar wrote: post #63
greenwich26 wrote: post #10

Why are governments allowed to collude like this? Isn't this the same idea as price fixing? Exploiting their monopoly (governments' monopoly on the right to do commerce) to unfairly raise prices (taxes)? The world needs at least somewhere where you can opt-out from Western neoliberalism and socialism.

> The world needs at least somewhere where you can opt-out from Western neoliberalism and socialism. Welcome to Iran...

[flagged]

Re: G7: Rich nations back deal to tax multinationals

#85

Post by vanilla-almond »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #44

This sounds like it will be hell for small software companies with customers all over the world. Paying taxes differently for each country of the customer you sell to is a ridiculous hardship. It only benefits the large multinationals to reduce their competition. These sorts of rules centralize markets to fewer and fewer companies able to spend the resources to fulfill more and more complex rules. The end result is h…

Small software companies with customers all over the world are not multinational companies. These small software companies are located in one country i.e. one physical presence, unlike tech companies where their presence is in multiple countries. So this tax change won't affect small software companies located in one country with international customers.

Edited to add...

The article states: "the rules will aim to make companies pay more tax in the countries where they are selling their products or services, rather than wherever they end up declaring their profits."

The following scenario is unclear to me: A software company based in a European country sell their SaaS product to primarily US customers. The majority of their profits are made with US customers, but the company has no office presence in the US. Does that mean the profit from US sales is subject to the rules of this new tax law? (I assume not, but I could be mistaken.) I assume this law only applies if the company has a physical presence in the US. (But now wondering if my interpretation is correct!)

Re: G7: Rich nations back deal to tax multinationals

#86

Post by nabla9 »

hliyan wrote: post #37
orf wrote: post #2

Summary: > Firstly, the G7 want a global minimum tax rate so as to avoid a "race to the bottom" where countries can undercut each other with low tax rates. > Secondly, the rules will aim to make companies pay tax in the countries where they are selling their products or services, rather than wherever they end up declaring their profits. Good. It’s a shame that Biden had to back down from the initial 28% because of do…

Good. I didn't think such a global minimum was politically possible. There was recently an article on HN where the author claimed that high tax rates don't impact high net worth individuals because they have already made their money. It just makes it harder for others to join the club. Perhaps what we need is a global maximum wealth (rather than income) cap, as a multiple of global median per-capita wealth. Perhaps s…

This is corporate tax, not personal tax.

Re: G7: Rich nations back deal to tax multinationals

#87

Post by plantain »

christkv wrote: post #66
throwaway13337 wrote: post #44

This sounds like it will be hell for small software companies with customers all over the world. Paying taxes differently for each country of the customer you sell to is a ridiculous hardship. It only benefits the large multinationals to reduce their competition. These sorts of rules centralize markets to fewer and fewer companies able to spend the resources to fulfill more and more complex rules. The end result is h…

I suspect a whole bunch of companies specializing and being middle men handling this will pop asap.

Is that meant to be a good thing?

Re: G7: Rich nations back deal to tax multinationals

#88

Post by DizzyDoo »

trinovantes wrote: post #72
throwaway13337 wrote: post #44

This sounds like it will be hell for small software companies with customers all over the world. Paying taxes differently for each country of the customer you sell to is a ridiculous hardship. It only benefits the large multinationals to reduce their competition. These sorts of rules centralize markets to fewer and fewer companies able to spend the resources to fulfill more and more complex rules. The end result is h…

Don't payment processors like Stripe already handle different regional taxes?

No, Stripe take their cut and the tax implications are down to the seller. However! They did recently acquire TaxJar (https://stripe.com/newsroom/news/taxjar) so I imagine things will become easier in this regard, reporting and filing, soon.

Re: G7: Rich nations back deal to tax multinationals

#89

Post by csomar »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #44

This sounds like it will be hell for small software companies with customers all over the world. Paying taxes differently for each country of the customer you sell to is a ridiculous hardship. It only benefits the large multinationals to reduce their competition. These sorts of rules centralize markets to fewer and fewer companies able to spend the resources to fulfill more and more complex rules. The end result is h…

> This sounds like it will be hell for small software companies with customers all over the world.

Uh, no, this will bring required tax profits for rich governments from these predatory countries that will finally fix their budget deficits and insure equality between its citizens.

/just kidding, this will break small companies and make it almost impossible to sell/export to richer countries for small new comers. The big companies will find new loopholes while facing less competition. The EU governments will then just increase the VAT to 35% to fix their deficits. Everything is fine.

Re: G7: Rich nations back deal to tax multinationals

#90

Post by nickpp »

So the largest violence monopolists in the world are using the unique opportunity handed to them by the pandemic to create a cartel with two purposes:

- raise the protection tax they levy on their subjects

- prevent smaller violence monopolists from undercutting their protection fees through competition

Basically governments deciding competition is not good for them and everyone should just pay up.

Post reply on HN