Italy Approves ‘Google Tax’ on Internet Companies
bloomberg.com
Italy Approves ‘Google Tax’ on Internet Companies
1–10 of 64 posts
Re: Italy Approves ‘Google Tax’ on Internet Companies
#2The EU objection is pretty solid, sadly.
Re: Italy Approves ‘Google Tax’ on Internet Companies
#3Italy: always at the forefront of legislative innovation to kill the internet. Piratebay blocks? Check. Fighting encryption and anonimity? Check. Taxing the crap out of anything that moves? Check. Cutting investments in r&d and universities across thr board? Check.
And then they wonder why their economy sucks.
Re: Italy Approves ‘Google Tax’ on Internet Companies
#4The EU objection is pretty solid, sadly.
Why sadly?
Re: Italy Approves ‘Google Tax’ on Internet Companies
#5The EU objection is pretty solid, sadly.
The objection reported in the article seems to me quite usual political boilerplate without real substance. One of the comments says something interesting: "Europe will have to address the fiscal treatment of multinationals, and by its nature, this is not a task to be faced on a piecemeal basis."
That sounds more the real issue of the problem to me.
Re: Italy Approves ‘Google Tax’ on Internet Companies
#6Google, Starbucks Corp. (SBUX) and Amazon.com Inc. have been criticized for strategies that shift billions of dollars of profits offshore.[...]
Google last year moved nearly $12 billion to the Bermuda unit, the majority of its worldwide income, cutting more than $2 billion off its global income tax bill. Google’s Italian unit last year reported total income taxes of just 1.8 million euros, corporate filings show.
Google's tax-avoidance has nothing to do with this new law. It's true that Google shifts profits around to avoid paying taxes where they do their actual labor. But changing that wouldn't change the fact that Google isn't based in Italy. For the sake of simplicity let's say that Google stayed in Ireland when they stopped abusing the system. They would sell all their European ads from Ireland, and pay a hefty tax with no loopholes. And their tax payments in Italy... would not change.
This law is strictly anti-outsourcing. It does nothing to stop Google's tax avoidance, and would still be just as 'needed' even if Google didn't avoid taxes. Bringing it up muddies the water and serves no purpose other than making Google look like a bad guy.
Re: Italy Approves ‘Google Tax’ on Internet Companies
#7Google, Starbucks Corp. (SBUX) and Amazon.com Inc. have been criticized for strategies that shift billions of dollars of profits offshore.[...] Google last year moved nearly $12 billion to the Bermuda unit, the majority of its worldwide income, cutting more than $2 billion off its global income tax bill. Google’s Italian unit last year reported total income taxes of just 1.8 million euros, corporate filings show. Goo…
Maybe I'm wrong, but with this law Google is not able to sell ads in Italy. So if they still want to do that they need to open an Italian company and therefore pay taxes in Italy. So, for Italy at least, things would change.
Re: Italy Approves ‘Google Tax’ on Internet Companies
#8Italy: always at the forefront of legislative innovation to kill the internet. Piratebay blocks? Check. Fighting encryption and anonimity? Check. Taxing the crap out of anything that moves? Check. Cutting investments in r&d and universities across thr board? Check. And then they wonder why their economy sucks.
They are doing that in most EU countries, not only Italy or the PIGS. I would say the PIGS have a lot of reasons besides maybe this why they are going badly; simple things like being anti-client-friendly as much as possible and finding that normal.
Re: Italy Approves ‘Google Tax’ on Internet Companies
#9I don't understand. If I want to use AdWords and if Google is still selling from Ireland,what do I do? Buying ads from Italianads.com is not going to make my ads appear on Google.
Re: Italy Approves ‘Google Tax’ on Internet Companies
#10The biggest problem with this law is not its effect on google: the way it's written now forbids any Italian internet user from visualizing ads that were not purchased from an Italian company, and this applies to all websites.
So while Google might be forced to comply, most international websites won't, rendering them automatically illegal in Italy, which is probably unenforceable. While I agree with the spirit of making these large multinational companies pay their fair share of taxes I think this is a rather ham fisted attempt.