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Google Warns Irish Government Against Tax Increase
theodp writes "The Irish government has been given a stark warning from some of the biggest American companies in Ireland on the risk of a mass exodus if the country's controversial low corporate tax rate is raised in return for an IMF/EU bailout to shore up the country's beleaguered banking system. According to The Telegraph, a statement signed by senior execs at Microsoft, HP, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, and Intel points out that although Ireland's tax rate may be low in European terms, it is not when compared with locations such as Singapore, India and China. Separately, the head of Google's 2,000-strong European HQ in Dublin told the Belfast Telegraph, 'anything that impinges on Ireland's competitiveness is going to be a big thing for Google,' adding, 'anything that increases the cost-base of a business is negative for competitiveness.'"
If you do not contribute to the economy of your host country one of the results is that it will have a low living standard, housing in disarray, unemployment through the roof. This will automatically put a number of limitations on what kind of people you can hire. To be more specific - you can hire only wageslaves with non-working dependants.
The thing is even shell companies contribute to the economy. Someone is paid to file the paperwork. And any real presence involves the hiring of a lot of people, purchase of goods and services, occupying real estate, etc. Even if the business pays zero taxes, it is still contributing in large ways to the economy of the host country. That's the thing that is ignored with all this talk of taxes. The largest contribution of business to society is the business itself and what it does. It's not the taxes paid.
High skilled labour, Low Taxes and Growth - you have to pick two
Why? They naturally go together. Ok, maybe I'm trolling a little here. But all this mouthing off in the thread about how industries should be paying their dues misses one really important point. In most of our lives, we have a choice what we do. Nobody is going to complain to me that I'm not eating enough at McDonald's or not drinking enough Coca Cola. These things are choices that we aren't expected or forced to make.
If there were a coercive monopoly on food or drink, my feeling is that the monopoly would use the same sort of arguments that governments use. McDonald's wouldn't just be a monopoly that you have to navigate two or three times a day. They would cast themselves as the food not just the provider of food. Any attempt to circumvent the monopoly would become an assault on our food supply not an assault on an abusive monopoly.
Government has the same sort of propaganda identification going. They're Society, Security, and Human Happiness all rolled into one. So if you fail to cough up your tax, you're nailing all of the above and are a bad person. But it's worth remember that government is just a group of people who have been handed extraordinary powers and delegated a bunch of duties (some important, some not important) which they provide as services.
This is important because ultimately the food supply is more important that most of what a modern government does. Yet aside from some modest regulation (mainly to make sure that nobody is poisoning anyone) and some subsidies, food production is disengaged from government. And it works just fine that way. We don't need a monopoly food supplier (and frankly would be very bad off if we had one).
And therein lies the reason why shopping around for better government is not such a bad idea. Governments need to provide some basic things: national security, a system of law, etc. But they often provide far more than that. They also vary in how effective they are in providing these things. Many businesses have a choice where parts of their business go. I think it quite reasonable for them to get the best deal they can.
The point is about USA, not about Ireland.
The USA is losing the production capacity and thus it is losing the real wealth.
Obviously it is a game, where Google is using a loophole by having its financial headquarters in Ireland to avoid US taxes.
Eventually, as Ireland raises taxes, Google will move somewhere else.
But the real problem is not for Ireland, it is for US, as Google and all other companies are moving out and will move out completely, if forced to play by the rules of US government.
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I can also give you a similar counterargument - if spending and inflating money is what creates wealth (as US gov't seems to believe), then ZIMBABWE must be the most productive country on earth.
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My argument is not bullshit, because it is exactly showing what is happening - production capacity is leaving those countries, with the most spending.
Germany and France will also face the music eventually, it's just they are not first in line. First in line is USA.
Germany is already forced to bail out entire freaking countries, lets see how long that kind of spending and inflating can continue without Germany either leaving the EU or also starting to feel the heat of companies leaving.
You can't handle the truth.
Except that I have nothing to do with any of your tea-parties and prefer to live in a place with no income tax, thus I have been driven away in the same manner these companies are, I can't help it but to tell you to wait a bit. US economy clearly cannot be directly compared to any of the Scandinavian countries, everything about these countries is different, from size, to population, to culture, to production capacity, to spending, to rules and laws, etc. It's never really a meaningful comparison, but comparing Scandinavian countries to other countries in Europe makes much more sense, and the European economies are mostly failing with the exception of the strongest ones, which will last longer. I wonder what it will look like in 20 years, but I am willing to bet that the Scandinavian countries you are so adamant in defending will be a failure in their own right.
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Of-course it is ALSO possible, that the failure of US economy (forced upon US by its gov't corruption and meddling with the free market) will lead to many US citizens leaving the US for 'greener pastures' and that many millions will end up in Scandinavian countries, thus prolonging their life spans, but I have no doubt that Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Greenland, will all follow the way of Iceland and Greece eventually, they are consuming and borrowing more than they are producing but at rates much different than that of the US.
Clearly none of those countries are involved in massive wars all over the place, so that's one of the reasons they are not dead yet.
You can't handle the truth.
Bush OTOH ran this country into the ground by cutting taxes on the wealthiest on the basis that they would do more investing, even as he blew up the DoD budget to gigantic proportions and ran the debt up to somewhere around $10tn.
The defense budget for all its "gigantic proportions" is still lower than either the Social Security or Medicare budgets. The debt has increased by about the same amount under 2 years of Obama as it did under 8 years of Bush. Rant all you want, but the actual numbers make your rant seem a bit foolish.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
social obligations (in the U.S. anyway) are not pretend, they are real
- well sure, they are social obligations
pushed forward to the future generations by borrowing the money to pay for them, because the past and the current recepients of these
obligations are not and were not paying for them.
And I mean that they were not paying for any of it - the SS fiasco, the pyramid that it is, if all the current employees lost their jobs today, then
all of the SS checks would stop tomorrow. That's because that money went to various other programs that politicians got elected upon, but didn't
raise taxes on the very people, who elected them actually to pay for any of it, so that money got spent one time. You cannot spend the same
money more than once (less you found a way to interfere with the laws of thermodynamics and conservation of energy.)
The ever increasing social obligations require ever increasing debt. Originally people paid much less in taxes both in terms of percentage points
and in terms of total absolute cost, the retirement age was also lower. With further increases in types of obligations, getting more people to benefit
from these programs, the costs were increasing, but since SS was never an investment/insurance program, it didn't keep and invest the money, it is now
full of IOUs and no actual cash, so the pyramid can only go on as the new people keep paying for the old.
So who exactly is OBLIGED here? Is it the children, who are obliged to pay for the 'social obligations' that their parents/grandparents are receiving?
Well, as you said: FUCK.THAT.SHIT. that's why I am not part of that type of economy any longer. I prefer economy where people are responsible for
their own future and retirement plans by investing their own earned money into their own businesses and taking their own RISKS with their money.
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these social programs were the original justification for the government taxing wages - wrong, unless you count waging wars as part of 'social programs'.
New Deal didn't introduce income taxes, it was done around 1913 in USA at least, before that time the US federal gov't was paid for by consumption
taxes upon some luxuries. 50% of the taxes came from saloons selling alcohol and the reason that income taxes were introduced was because the
anti-saloon movement in USA approached the feminist movement, who were also anti-saloon and more importantly they were anti-alcohol. That's also the
beginning of the entire prohibition disaster. Also the original income tax was only applied to the richest people in USA and they paid under 1.5%
income tax. Of-course as the gov't saw the huge increases in their 'revenue', they started growing and increasing the taxes over and over, clearly
if you give them a finger, they'll take your hand. It was one of the worst decisions that USA public allowed it's gov't to make, it gave away the liberties
and freedoms to get some security and clearly now it lost both.
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You are forgetting that Pre-New Deal, the capitalists paid for everything.
- you are forgetting that pre-new deal gov't CAUSED the
recessions of 1920 and 1929, only while the 1920 recession ended in 1 year, after the gov't cut its costs by over 70%, the 1929 recession turned into
the Great Depression as the gov't decided it was going to fight fire with fire and started printing/spending and generally getting involved into
economy.
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Overall (today) it's a big net loss for the labor class and a big win for the capitalists.
- the corruption of the gov't (by corruption
I mean the gov't meddling with economy of society) has caused SOME corporatists to take advantage of the political system and gain immensly by
having gov't protected monopolies. However it is not true at all, that the capitalists have a net win and labor has a net loss, everybody has a net loss
in this and those
You can't handle the truth.