EU Unveils Plan To Force Facebook, Google and Amazon To Pay Their Fair Share of Tax (independent.co.uk)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Independent: The European Commission is bringing forward plans to make major multinationals such as Google, Amazon and Facebook disclose exactly where and how much tax they pay across the continent. The plan was expected to include rules requiring businesses earning more than 600 million euros a year (nearly $700 USD) to open up their tax affairs to public scrutiny, revealing their profits and accounts in every country in which they operate within the EU. Since the Panama Papers, a new clause has reportedly been added to require the companies to say how much money they make in so-called "tax havens." A final, more general statement would reveal profits in the rest of the world, treated as a single item. The plans will be presented by Britain's EU Commissioner, Lord Hill, who told the BBC: "This is a carefully thought through but ambitious proposal for more transparency on tax. While our proposal on [country-by-country reporting] is not of course focused principally on the response to the Panama Papers, there is an important connection between our continuing work on tax transparency and tax havens that we are building into the proposal."

Comments

Re:Ironic

[TheRaven64]

There isn't likely to be any complaint. The British government is currently a little bit shaky over the Panama leaks. It turns out that the Prime Minister blocked previous EU plans to strengthen disclosure rules for off-shore trusts, and is the beneficiary of an off-shore trust. The Chancellor wasn't popular even before the current revelations, but it turns out that both he and the PM have benefitted from the lower tax rate for high income holders and a large chunk of his income comes from dividends in a company that hasn't paid any UK tax for years. They're playing up the fact that it was a British commissioner who is pushing this because they want to make it look as if the British Government is in favour of this kind of thing. Now, of course, they may try to block it in a year's time when people have all forgotten about the current scandals...

Re:Setting the bar a bit low

[silentcoder]

Well, actually enforcing international law against shell companies being anonymously owned would make huge strides - and coincidentally basically kill terrorist funding networks.
In case you were wondering, Panama is only the SECOND worst about letting people form shell companies without having to provide identifying documentation so the ownership is known... the worst offender is the USA.

There are very few American names in the Panama papers - because Americans don't need Panama to dodge taxes or hide income from atrocities... they can do that more easily in Delaware or Nevada.

Re:Actually this is the problem

[silentcoder]

It comes from a supreme court case in 1910 when a corporation decided to pay it's workers a decent living wage, and cut margins a bit to afford that. The shareholders sued claiming the CEO had no right to pay workers a penny more than the least he could get away with - as that reduced their profits. They won.

However, it's pretty important to know that this was an American case, it has no bearing on any other country nor is it supported by the laws of any other country. German law, for example, does not describe companies in a way that could possibly support such a legal finding - companies there are described as communities existing for the benefit of all involved - shareholders, employees and customers alike and would lose a case where they screwed any of those (which is why in Germany every corporate board HAS to be made up of 50% non-shareholding employees, usually appointed by the union).

So the logic that drives that is uniquely and exclusively American (and to a lesser extent exists in Britain) but the rest of the world is not that insane. This is why laws like these tends to look like they target American companies (look at how facebook got mentioned here) - it's not really the case, they are laws the likes of which European companies have always worked with and complied with happily because *not* complying would require doing unthinkable. The utterly opposite incentives created by US laws leads to US companies feeling targetted since their behavior mostly consists of those "unspeakable things".

Re:All tax is immoral

[silentcoder]

The term "wealth creator" is basically a giant red flag that means "This person is an utter tool or a troll or both".

Re:All tax is immoral

[Anonymous Coward]

The term "wealth creator" is basically a giant red flag that means "This person is an utter tool or a troll or both".

It is a term lifted from the writings of Ayn Rand and means somebody who strives to be utterly completely and perfectly selfish and most of all strives to prevent socialism, communism, and any other state intervention in society, that allows poor people to "leech" his hard-earned wealth.

Re:Setting the bar a bit low

[Maritz]

I suppose it gets a few extra marks for not being about the mythical 'climate change' for once...

Yeah, lol. There'll be articles on the equally fictitious 'evolution' as well. Praise Jesus.