Google, Apple and Microsoft Squirm As Global Tax Schemes Scrutinized

An anonymous reader writes: Google, Apple and Microsoft chiefs were hauled in front of an Australian Senate Committee on Wednesday and forced to answer questions about their tax dodging structures. "Under questioning from Greens Senator Christine Milne, [Google's Maile Carnegie] revealed none of the revenue derived from Google's lucrative advertising business is taxed in Australia, rather it is booked in Singapore where the corporate tax rate is set at 17 per cent, as opposed to Australia's 30 per cent. ... However in the strongest defense yet of the company's complex tax structure, Ms Carnegie attempted to highlight the hypocrisy of criticising global technology companies for using the same approach that Australian mining firms, like Rio Tinto, use when deriving profits from China. 'These are international tax arrangements and what Google is doing in Australia is very very similar to what Australian companies are doing outside of Australia. I am not sitting here today trying to defend whether those practices are right or wrong, they are simply the way the global tax system is currently working and we are trying to operate within that.' Ms. Carnegie said it was up to the government to create a different system, which the company would then abide by."

Comments

Re:In other words ...

[Archangel Michael]

Trickle down economics is being blown away by trickle up poverty. Government is the problem, not the solution. Taxes are regressive. The fact that nothing is working as intended is because people think taxes and government regulation have no negative consequences, and keep making more of them to fix the previous consequences of bad government taxes and regulations.

Re:So - the fact that others are doing it makes it

[Pieroxy]

Reference needed. There is no country on earth where police, fire, health and education systems costs 30% of the GDP. Governments want that to do all sort of stuff most members of the population don't want. This is why people try to evade taxes. Because they're spent 90% on bullshit. If my country was asking for 3% of the GDP and that was it, nobody in their right mind would try to evade taxes because they would be fair: (almost) insignificant for the people and providing quality services.

Unfortunately, this is almost not true in every country. All governments are huge ballooned administration that forever wants to gobble more money to do more bullshit, most of the time orders of magnitudes less efficiently than private companies could.