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Korea Plans To Tax Google, Apple and Amazon (koreatimes.co.kr)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Korea Times: The government will move quickly to impose taxes on Google, Apple, Amazon and other global IT companies. This follows policymakers and lawmakers paying greater attention to growing criticism that the firms earn billions of dollars in sales here annually but pay no taxes. Naver, Kakao and other domestic companies have been complaining for years about "an uneven playing field," arguing their foreign rivals should pay corporate income tax on the revenue they generate in Korea. Under the law, the government is unable to tax global companies as it is not mandatory for them to disclose their sales and operating profit here. The Corporate Tax Act stipulates that global companies must pay taxes when they have fixed places of business in Korea. This law has provided global companies with an excuse to avoid taxes while they expand their businesses rapidly here as their bases are established in other countries such as the United States, China and Ireland. Ahn Jeong-sang, a policy advisor to the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, said: "Under the current law, preliminary or ancillary places of business are not regarded as global companies' offices in Korea, and this has played a role in their tax avoidance. Considering the characteristics of the digital economy, the concept of fixed places of business needs to be expanded so that the government can secure authority to impose taxes on them."
apple will soon open up in NK!
finally Samsung exerts political power over their smartphone rival Apple
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Foreign companies might be able to offer artificially low prices due to not having to pay taxes.
They use our roads, schools, military and police without paying a dime, it's about time they pay their dues sames as me. And SK just had a major bribery scandal so it'll be hard to just grease palms over there.
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And I was like WTF... that's a new tactic.
No more loopholes to avoid paying. If the revenue was from money gained from sales in the US, then they need to pay US tax accordingly.
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
Always. Hell hath no fury like government denied it's cut.
Corporatism != Free Market
What's the norm here amongst other nations? I thought Europe taxed global companies on sales via VAT. Does SK not have a sales tax?
The US taxes foreign corporations on income they derive "regularly" from operations in the US. So that also would appear to be normal. I'm honestly shocked SK didn't do this previously.
Except..... this isn't protectionism. This is the same thing the US government goes after domestic companies for when they try to play tax haven games with places with Ireland. Which is why they enacted the whole "pay the taxes you owe overseas then pay the remainder that you owe here".
You clearly don't understand what's going on, so I'm trying to dumb this down to the point you'll get it. Korea is telling companies they need to pay taxes on money they make in Korea, like MANY other countries (including the US) already do....
Cue Apple et al opening new factories in Singapore, Romania and some African nations.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
AC a lot of different nations have a tax rate that is not just that VAT for a product sold.
A nations own brands have to pay tax.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
And countries operating in Korea do so through a subsidiary whose own country is ... take a guess ... Korea.
VAT SchmeeAT. That's nothing to do with this issue at all. For one thing, companies collect it, they don't pay it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Somalia requires intellectual giants like you as citizens/ inhabitants.
New Zealanders are well balanced with a chip on each shoulder. One represents Australia, the other the rest of the world
Korea Plans To Tax Google, Apple and Amazon
No, sorry. That is incorrect.
Korea plans on taxing Koreans *via* Google, Apple, and Amazon.
They will simply up their prices to Koreans by the amount of the tax plus enough to cover their administrative costs. Relatively few Koreans who buy or use those corporations' products and/or services now will stop buying if the prices go up, unless prices double or triple. They'll simply have less to spend domestically. Koreans who buy iPhones now will still buy iPhones even if the price goes up as it's a status thing. Apple may even increase sales as an iPhone becomes even more seen as a "luxury/top-end" item in Korea.
It will hurt Korean consumers far more than those three mega-corps. It would barely be even the impact of an accounting rounding error on the scales in which their ledgers operate.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
If you think about it, they're the same thing. You pay $100, the company gets to keep $80, the government gets $20.
Once you realize that, you realize the entire problem of multi-national corporations dodging taxes is self-inflicted. They can dodge taxes because they have no physical body and thus can exist simultaneously in multiple tax jurisdictions. This allows them to shift "their" money from one jurisdiction to another in a manner which benefits them by allowing them to avoid corporate taxes. So the loophole only exists because we insist on taxing companies.
People, unlike companies, have a physical body and can thus only exist in one tax jurisdiction at a time, meaning they can't dodge taxes this way. So closing the loophole is easy - just set the corporate tax rate to zero and implement it as sales taxes. Once you get over the "I don't want to pay for it, the company should pay for it" misconception (the company pays for it by charging you a higher price, so you're still paying for it), this is a simple problem to solve.
Yep.
Now if all the corporations could pay their shares of taxes globally, it would help.
Apple,
Siemens,
Ford,
Samsung,
etcetcetc...
They pay nearly zero taxes in many many countries by using a lot of tax loopholes and by artificially booking the profits in the countries where they aren't taxed, which is totally wrong.
aaaaaaa
Starting a civil war is probably not the best way to resolve tax issues.
aaaaaaa
And?
God handed down a rule that says that if you pay taxes in Ireland on income that you earn in another country that there shall be no other taxes upon it?
South Korea has opted out of playing that game.