Slashdot Mirror
Four EU Countries Seek Higher Taxes On Google and Amazon (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Reuters:
France, Germany, Italy and Spain want digital multinationals like Amazon and Google to be taxed in Europe based on their revenues, rather than only profits as now, their finance ministers said in a joint letter. France is leading a push to clamp down on the taxation of such companies, but has found support from other countries also frustrated at the low tax they receive under current international rules. Currently such companies are often taxed on profits booked by subsidiaries in low-tax countries like Ireland even though the revenue originated from other EU countries. "We should no longer accept that these companies do business in Europe while paying minimal amounts of tax to our treasuries," the four ministers wrote in a letter seen by Reuters.
So you are assuming these companies are being taxed adequately in the US. Interesting.
The most ironic thing is that the US taxman actually goes after american citizens that live outside the US for purposes of collecting taxes. It's the only country (with Ethiopia if I'm not mistaken) to do that. But it doesn't go after American companies that stash money outside the US and that should pay the taxes in their own damn country.
Because it makes it completely clear who is actually paying the taxes - the customers. A tax on revenue is otherwise known as a sales tax.
Companies don't pay corporate taxes. It gets passed on to customers as higher prices, to employees as lower wages, and to owners/stockholders as reduced dividends. You see, companies are just paper entities - they don't really exist. They're just a line a bunch of people (owners/stockholders and employees) draw around themselves so they can declare "we are working together." All the productivity, all the innovation, all the decisions are made by those people, not "the company". The company is just an inanimate banner, a flag they hold over their operations.
So you can't really tax a company. That's like impounding a car for assisting in a bank robbery, or sentencing a PC to prison for being used in a hack. Losing those items just turns into an additional financial expense for the people who used to own them. Likewise, corporate taxes are just additional financial expenses for the people involved with a company - owners/stockholders, employees, and customers.
Once you realize this, you realize how stupid it is to have a million different taxes for a million different things. It's a horribly inefficient way to collect tax revenue. The most efficient method would be to have a single tax which you assess against all people. If you believe in progressive taxation, then the obvious tax to keep is the income tax. Pretty much all other taxes* can be eliminated with no effect on the economy or tax revenue, other than vastly reducing the amount of money wasted on collecting taxes and forcing people/businesses to keep track of a million different taxes.
* (Behavior-modifying taxes would still be useful since their primary goal is not to collect revenue for the government. e.g. Fuel taxes to encourage energy efficiency, property taxes to prevent speculators from holding on to fallow land which could otherwise be put to much better use.)
This also avoids the hypocrisy of saying you believe in no taxation without representation, then simultaneously wanting to tax corporations while believing they should have no role in government.
everything
Yep. It's one of the reasons why our infrastructure isn't falling apart, why we rank very high in satisfaction, health, happiness, why internet is blazingly fast and dirt cheap, why public transport can be described as excellent...
Governments aren't for profit entities funnelling cash to a couple of shareholders.
You think an advanced society has people arrested for criticizing Islam?
Since some loopy nuts believe that censoring speech and having blasphemy laws is the sign of an advanced society I guess so. Myself? If your society has blasphemy laws you're not. And if you're using those laws to protect only one religion you're regressing as a society.
If your "advanced society" can't stand criticism, it's sure not advanced. And if you've got people promoting it, then you've got social rot. Something that most of the west has seen a resurgence in, in the last decade or so.
Om, nomnomnom...
I am in Germany right now and your statement is complete and utter bullshit. You can say almost anything you want in Germany. You can't do Nazi things for historical reasons but people do talk about it without any problems at all. People can and do criticize islam along with pretty much everything else. Of course if you criticize an entire religion you should not expect many people to agree with you or continue to provide a platform for your speech.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
Also - taxing revenue would essentially remove all profit from their balance sheets. Essentially dooming them as functioning companies.
Taxing revenue at the same rate as profit would bankrupt them but because revenue is usually significantly higher than profit, you would likely tax it at a different rate. The only problem I see with this is that different industries have drastically different amounts of profit for the same amount of revenue. I think a better solution might be to tax profits of international companies based on the percentage of business done in that country. So if a company has a profit of 20M and 20% of their revenue is from France then 20% of their profit should be taxed in France.
Governments aren't for profit entities funnelling cash to a couple of shareholders, openly and with any sort of transparency or accountability.
FTFY. I broadly agree with you, but pretending like our current governments aren't corrupt is pretty naive. Name your country and we can provide appropriate citations.
You can say almost anything you want and I don't have to agree with it. You are reading your own views into what I have written.
However, saying that all of Islam has a problem because of what a tiny minority of believes does is incorrect and unhelpful. There are christian religious extremists, buddhist religious extremists etc. We also have political extremists of many different viewpoints that use violence. Liberals are not bad because of the antifa groups and conservatives are not bad because of things like the KKK. Most of the killings of abortion doctors has been done by christian religious extremists and also remember that the KKK started as a religious organization with the intent to kill many racial groups such as black and jews.
Also note that President W. Bush very strictly drew a line between extremists that used islam and everyone else. The FBI has said that most of the intelligence we get about extremists islamic groups comes from other people that follow islam and don't like seeing it used as a weapon to kill people. Right now I see islam as working on the same kind of problems that christianity had during the crusades. The violence will go away in time with help from members and non-members but if you target the entire group for the actions of a small minority you will turn the entire group against you and make the problem worse.
It may make you feel better to target all of Islam but you are not helping the situation and instead all you are doing is spreading hate and making the situation worse.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
Your first two paragraphs are really about transfer pricing used for tax avoidance. That would be fixable if there were sufficient political will, but there isn't. Most transfer pricing used for this is immediately apparent when you examine common ownership of the licensor and licensee. This is not hidden because it is not illegal, in fact it is usually listed on the 10k forms public corps file with SEC in the US. This is why stock prices do not reflect the low profit levels of companies using this tactic (I'm looking at you, Nike).
Changing the tax structure to lure companies to repatriate their money is absolutely the wrong answer. Period. The government either has authority over those companies, or it doesn't. If it does, they should pay the tax demanded. If it doesn't, why should they pay any tax at all?
If the tax rate is fair, then the companies dodging it are wrong to do so. If the tax rate is unfair, then the appropriate answer is to change it, not cheat.
Importantly, the corporations are not the ones to determine if it is fair, that is the province of the elected representatives of the PEOPLE. Unfortunately, our legislatures are far more responsive to corporate input than the people right now, mostly because the people do not pay sufficient attention and have little patience with subtle factors. We respond to complex situations based on soundbites that resonate with us.
Finally, I hate the flat tax idea. Because of the law of diminishing marginal utility (too much to go into here) flat taxes are very regressive in outcome. This is just a fancy way of saying that x% tax hits a poor person harder than a rich person. It may slow the rate of growth of a rich person but will actually degrade a poor person's standard of living.
Beyond that, as far as simplifying the tax system, I'm with you. It is a mess.
You are assuming that religious "extremists" are the only problem. In fact, monotheistic religions are the problem and the extremists are basically just those monotheists who have been activated by some perceived threat. All these religions have the same poisonous seed in them: the belief that if a member of the outside world (whether Jews, Christians, atheists, or just the wrong type of their own religion) tells the "wrong" thing to their kids then those kids will burn in some form of hell for eternity. That, quite simply, is motivation that justifies any crime, any atrocity on Earth as a triviality in the face of the infinite. Anyone that believes in a god-given monopoly on the truth is dangerous; make them feel that their truth is under genuine threat and they will turn into "extremists".
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"