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Spanish Authorities Raid Google Offices Over Tax (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Reuters report:Spanish officials raided Google's Madrid offices on Thursday in a probe related to its payment of taxes, a person familiar with the matter said, barely a month after the internet company had its headquarters in France searched on suspicion of tax evasion. A spokeswoman for Google said in a brief statement the company complied with fiscal legislation in Spain just as it did in all countries where it operated. The company was working with authorities to answer all questions, the spokeswoman added. Google is under pressure across Europe from politicians and the public upset at how multinationals exploit their presence around the world to minimize their tax bills.
a person familiar with the matter said, barely a month after the internet company had its headquarters in France searched on suspicion of tax evasion.
I don't think there is any doubt that they are evading taxes. The problem is that they appear to be doing so (technically) legally. I'm wondering when countries will wise up and finally start changing the laws to make this sort of tax dodging hard or impossible. I realize to some degree this is playing a game of legal whack-a-mole but it needs to be done.
A spokeswoman for Google said in a brief statement the company complied with fiscal legislation in Spain just as it did in all countries where it operated.
While that is most likely true it also is nothing more than avoiding the question. They know they are avoiding taxes and the fact that they manage to do so in some clever legal fiction doesn't make is any more ethical. Google is hugely profitable and the shell game they are playing to avoid taxes is reprehensible as far as I'm concerned. I'm particularly galled when they act like it is somehow the fault of the lawmakers that they are dodging taxes they really should owe.
Spare me the arguments about "it's legal so it's right" - lots of things are legal but aren't ethical and this is one of them. I'm an accountant and crap like this just infuriates me because I'm the one that would be asked to be "morally flexible" about this.
Alright, I guess it has to be me...
"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!"
No. You still need the sneaky guy. If you run a publicly traded company you kind of have a fiduciary duty to legally pay as little in taxes as possible. You are obligated to perform as well as possible for the investors.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Your #1 flaw in your presumption is you assume that the government has a RIGHT to collect taxes. It does not have that right.
They do have a right to collect taxes. It's not even a question. In the US this is enshrined in the Constitution. You might try reading it sometime. Other countries have similar legal frameworks. Your notion that governments have no right to collect taxes is preposterous nonsense. Furthermore it would be impossible to have a functioning civil society without taxation and you can't have taxation in the first place without a legal framework to support it. It's legal, appropriate and necessary. Get over it.
It is a necessary evil that we collect taxes, and everyone, everywhere should do everything in their power to avoid taxes, and keep their own money. I would consider it a duty of the citizen to avoid all taxes as legally possible.
Taxes are the price of civilized society. Don't like taxes? Go live in the woods somewhere off the grid. If you want to be a part of society then shut up, pay your fair share, and enjoy the results. Don't think the amount you are asked to pay is fair? Work to get the tax law reformed but understand that you will need to pay enough to cover the government services that we collectively demand.
Taxes are regressive. All of them.
I don't think you have a clue what the word regressive actually means when it comes to tax.
Your shareholders can't demand you break the law, or even flirt with it.
No, they're not allowed to do that in the US either. For the most part, no one is breaking the law. The mechanisms they are using are fully legal, generally by exploiting legalisms that were intentionally left in the tax code for "generous campaign contributions". The butt-hurt feeling everyone has, that was their government selling them out, leaving these ways of not paying taxes everything thought they should be paying.
Now perhaps Google is breaking the law in these cases, that's for a court to figure out. I bet it's not so simple and clear cut. I have heard rumors however that Spain and France employ some extra-legal methods of dealing with these cases that involve some back scratching. And perhaps Google is going to pay a percentage of what it owes with a very disingenuous "My bad", and politicians are going to walk away talking about how they brought down the monster and somewhere some programs won't be paid for because the money doesn't exist.
It is a matter of fairness. Either business income tax is useful, and there is no reason to let shady companies dodge them. Or they are not useful and no company should pay them.
Overall, I feel that taxing businesses helps avoiding many cases of a company switching from salaries of top employees to business accounts.
Finally, you seem to assume that the Spanish tax code is somewhat the same as the US tax code. I don't know the Spanish tax code, but in France, companies pay a non negligible amount of taxes.