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Germany Urges Global Minimum Tax For Digital Giants (yahoo.com)
Germany is backing a global minimum tax rate as Europe looks to levy tax notably on U.S. tech giants. "Europe is trying to devise a strategy to tax profits from the likes of Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and digital platforms such as YouTube and Airbnb which currently manage to keep fiscal exposure to a bare minimum," reports Yahoo News. From the report: "We need a minimum tax rate valid globally which no state can get out of (applying)," Scholz, a social democrat in conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government, told the "Welt am Sonntag" weekly. Digital platforms "aggravate a problem which we know well from globalization and which we are trying to counter -- the shifting of profits to fiscally beneficial regions," said Scholz. Scholz explained he had launched an initiative designed to help states react to so-called fiscal dumping in support of embryonic OECD plans designed to fight tax transparency and cross-border tax evasion. "We require coordinated mechanisms which prevent the displacement of revenues to tax havens," said Scholz. A March proposal by the Commission includes introducing a tax as a bridge measure until such time as the OECD can roll out a measure which can be applied globally.
They can go pound sand
And will this tax be applied to companies owned by (((them))).
It's interesting talking to Germans about their laws and how they have an inherent assumption that everything is regulated. I have the assumption of the freedom to do what I want. They're a little shocked at my attitude, but it's very interesting to see their minds wrestle with the concept.
Tell us again how leftist aren't authoritarian.
Here's Germany trying to tell, say, maybe Poland or Israel what their tax policy should be.
Given Germany's history, they just missed a great opportunity to shut the fuck up.
Nations, provinces, counties, and cities all have to compete with each other to get people to live, work, visit, or operate a business there. If you are incapable of offering an attractive proposition of benefits vs. costs, then they won't come to you.
The solution is to make yourself more attractive, not to require all your competitors to place the same onerous burden on the people or businesses you aren't attracting.
"Religion in Germany" on Wikipedia cites sources claiming that in 2016, nearly 60 percent of Germans were followers of (((Jesus of Nazareth))). That's a whole lot of (((them))).
History has shown that protectionism is ALWAYS the best policy.
America likes "free markets" when they're profiting, but cry like bitches when the tables are reversed.
I wish Europe was as strong as China, and just banned all American/Israeli corporations.
You have to keep in mind Germany's long history of wanting money from *other* countries, and I do mean WWII.
The EU is no different; it's controlled by Germans, their banks are in Germany.
Fair taxes my ass.
They drained Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain out of money.
The EU (at least monetary union) suffers from a similar problem as the US, a large geographic region using the same currency.
But when the European Parliament discussed a tax equivalent to the US tax, Germany who controls the EU and would've been the highest tax payer given such tax, refused immediately.
Meanwhile Germany is doing great while a lot of countries in Europe are struggling.
But expecting anything ethical from Germany is nonsense, from WWII to the EU through the VW diesel scandal.
They just love free money
I am not a big fan of taxes, but we need to cover infrastructure and public service costs somehow.
I can see where they are coming from. With the shift of business moving from something physical to purely digital, they can’t rely on their old revenue sources. At the same time, citizens want services and business appreciate grants for new investments. If the coffers are empty, then we end up at a disadvantage. Many of the large tech corporations could afford to be taxed at 5% and still be holding on to a large profit. Maybe the simplest is just targeted sales tax increases?
I really don’t know what the right balance is, so I’d be curious what suggestions there are to prevent companies not paying their dues, while also ensuring their countries don’t go bankrupt.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Arrogant Americans who think the world still revolves around them. The tech giants of the world (and the Starbucks types too) need to pay a fair share of their profits back to the nations in which they do business. I would't care so much but none of these businesses are squeaky clean either - Starbucks with their litter and attendant ecological costs, Facebook with their data harvesting, Apple with their unrepairable ewaste. And so on. Now I know some Slashtard (every cunt on here is oh so clever) will be along to label me as some sort of liberal/communist but I'm actually right of centre. That said, these companies must start paying their way.
That is what this proposal for cross border coordinated tax system sounds like.
What will they do, if a country doesn't play along? Politely "suggest" they should join the union, "or else ..."?
I wonder if they dream of the entire planet goose-stepping under their rule at night...
Of course allowing each country to keep its rules and culture... as long as it's their rules and culture. And calling everyone a Nazi who doesn't play along. Who came up with that again? Oh yeah!
PROTIP: The purpose of tax is only and exclusively, to finance the services that our state provides us.
If Google operates only in the US, what exactly does the German state do for them? And if they run servers in Germany, then if they don't have to pay for the services required to run them, like or fire fighters, or cops, or roads (to get there), then it's not them who fucked.
Not that any of those corporations isn't a total piece of shit. Like always, all sides are the bad guys.
Income tax, inheritance tax, even VAT, all that crap is subject to waaaay to many loopholes. But it doesn't matter if Joe is a billionaire or a pauper, he buys something at the register or gets it delivered, tax that sale and it's much simpler to audit and enforce than all the other tax methods combined.
The last whimper of principled conservatism, once a policy incorporates all their official desiderata except naked self-enrichment: "But all our businesses will flee to the other side!"
Which is rich, because the "other side" is a mirror image, all saying exactly the same thing (about the naked self-enrichment gap). And then they complain that government is wasteful, but no sane business would tolerate being raking over the jurisdictional coals by this game-theoretic slam dunk.
So government spends all the money up front to develop a sound policy framework, and then it doesn't get implemented—in favour of something else, far less sound, and far more open to counterproductive manipulation—because of this fatal "what about the other side?" fang.
A global minimum tax on high technology is government attempting to apply the rules of sane business management.
And there's nothing an unprincipled conservative hates more than government intruding upon competence.
Oh, the howls will be unbearable if this proposal so much as inches forward.
1. Have a reasonable VAT/Sales Tax
2. Have "Import Duties" to match the cost of regulatory compliance with environmental and worker-safety/worker-non-exploitation regulations that exist in the U.S. that the country being imported from does not have (country of origin, no faking it through intermediaries, if you're caught cheating, all of your assets are confiscated, and your corporate person-hood is ended, EXECUTION).
This will raise all boats in no time. But, it won't happen because people at the top want/need to be able to exploit vulnerable people in order to make themselves feel important.
Please, do understand what "Double Irish" means concerning taxes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Double Irish:
Adobe Systems ...
Airbnb
Apple Inc.
Facebook
General Electric
Google
IBM
Microsoft
Oracle Corp.
Pfizer Inc.
Starbucks
Yahoo!
When they run out of "creative" ways to collect tax revenue expect them to fall back to simple technical means of controlling data flow to foreign countries. In the name of preserving equality, naturally.
I find it humorous how the Europeans and socialist states of America continue to undermine there own prosperity and that of there populations. You can have both health care and a high standard of living without socialism. You don't have to steal from your neighbor to cover the cost of the babysitter.
Not everyone is going to share your desires and values. And that is OK. What is not OK is using government to fund your social program or that of a corporate or industry. But wheather you look at socialist agenda or so called fasist capitalism we have in many places both are stealing via government. Quit it and everybody wins. You would have the funds to care for your family, start a business, or any number of other things. But doing any of this via government is inefficient and undermines democracy and everybody's well being.
Where have I heard this one before.
I think if they offer free ponies maybe the US would sign up.
I wonder why someone would think this would be in any way likely to be a possibility?
That said, there is sort of an analgous practice now in which companies paying tax in the US can deduct taxes paid overseas. Thus in some sense the US is setting a minimum global tax rate.
The problem is that companies figured out ways to evade even that measure. Hence the German exasperation and consequent non-starter proposal.
Corporations and the state are NOT in an adversarial relationship.
The corporo-state and the workers ARE in an adversarial relationship.
If you understood that, you'd stand up for your class interests instead of undermining them, and support socialism.
When taxpayers move from one country to another to lower their taxes, EU countries keep asking for what they call "harmonization." By this they mean that all EU countries should increase their tax rates to match the highest tax rate. On the eve of Brexit, Germany is now making this argument for the whole world.
I have a better idea: let's all tax Germany for the increasing amount of carbon it is now emitting.
It is time to have taxes collected for goods that cross borders. At this time, we do not do that, but that needs to change.
The fact is, that we can have the delivery trucks collect the tax. Ideallly, all nations/states would put a simple agreed upon tax. So, for many nations, they have a VAT of typically 20%. We can all collect 20%. If a business is caught NOT paying the taxes, or lying about the goods, they will be blocked from shipping to other nations. IOW, it really is not worth it to cheat.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You have to realize that our "being religious" has nothing to do with your "being religious".
It's only on paper. And only because we have no separation of church and state, and so if you are born, you 1. automatically default to the religion of your parents, and 2. the Catholic and evangelical churches, and *only* them, *literally* have a state tax, that is deducted from your salary, unless you actively opt out.
Literally nobody, but a few very old people and a couple of nutjobs, goes to church.
Very often, not ever for marriage.
Look at how people in Germany reacted, when "popular YouTubers" Silas Nacita and Conner Sullivan came out as a "child rapist" (quote from the comments)... err, "religitard" (another quote from the comments). They ripped him apart in the comments.
To us, you Americans and the Saudis/IS are in one category: Religious nutjobs.
No offense. Just describing how it's seen over here.
So no, the only people in Germany, that would qualify as religious, according to the US definition, are the radical Muslims, and the radical Christians. It's always funny, to see how long a Muslim immigrant lasts in Germany, before he succumbs to that delicious, delicious pork. :)
No. People need to be able to vote with their feet as a last resort. Escaping even the sweet-talking charismatic overlords who rise to power in a democracy is a necessary right. Democracy is a means to an end, and is not the end itself, which is the freedom to pursue your own dreams and make your own life better.
There should never be a world government (Sorry, my fellow Star Trek nerds) because then there is nowhere to flee to when (not if) it goes bad. And that means not beginning to internationalize forced tax rates.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
that just targets US companies. Make it a global minimum for _all_ corporations and end this race to the bottom.
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A thief is bitter that he cannot steal as much as they would like to because people at least have a choice to deal with other thieves who steal less.
Liberal, of course meaning, what Americans call "neocon-libertarian"
Nonsense. A neoconservative believes in "left" big government domestic policies combined with "right" hawkish and interventionist foreign policy. This is the EXACT OPPOSITE of libertarianism. So "neocon-libertarian" is a completely meaningless term.
It was the EU trying to tax the people who built the tower in Babylon because one day some hunter gatherer in Brandenburg climbed a tree and could see the top of it.
Scholtz's proposal urges the rest of the world to tax the nonsense out of German digital giants, like SAP.
Natural consequence of unrestricted capital flows: jurisdiction needs to be expanded to cover the whole world.
"the shifting of profits to fiscally beneficial regions" ... in other domains, know as "competition". It's a notion that is familiar to those who provide goods and services to people who want them (read "useful" goods and services). Governments, unbound by this natural constraint, naturally hate this concept.
Merkel's idea to create a Worldwide Government Monopoly might be considered an anti-competitive practice, if it had come from one of these evil global corporations.
Might makes right irrelevant.
"Left" in air quotes because of course America doesn't have anything resembling actual left politics, which by definition requires an opposition to capitalism.
American reformist left (aka social democracy) is a capitulation with capital, therefore not left wing. Raising welfare spending within capitalism is not left politics.
to make a large enough organization to tell the US to go fuck themselves? Funny how there's this campaign backed by billionaires who make liberal use of tax shelters to kill the EU...
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Try bumping your thinking up one more abstraction level. Who pays corporate taxes? Corporate taxes are taken out of profits. Profits are distributed to shareholders. Shareholders wishing larger distributions (higher profits) insist on lower employee wages and higher prices for products. So corporate taxes are paid for via (1) higher product prices, (2) lower employee wages, and (3) lower shareholder distribution.
There's no need for corporate taxes if you just tax those three directly. (1) can be replaced by a sales tax. (2) can be replaced by an earned income tax. (3) can be replaced by a unearned income tax (interest on savings, distributions). None of these can be thwarted by the Double Irish. (1) yields tax revenue in the country where the sale occurred. (2) yields tax revenue in the country where the company is operating (has employees). (3) yields tax revenue in the country where the owners reside. All bases are covered. The only difference is in the bookkeeping.
The only reason the Double Irish works is because corporations can exist simultaneously in multiple countries. People can only exist in one country at a time, so they can't pull off a Double Irish. So it's easy to eliminate this problem - eliminate corporate taxes and shift them to sales, earned income, and unearned income taxes. The only problem is that a large number of people mistakenly think that corporate taxes have no impact on people, and so feel taxing corporations is preferable to taxing people.
There is no difference - no matter what you tax, in the end a person somewhere pays for it. Taxes are an assignment of a percentage of the country's productivity to the government coffers. And since the only source of productivity is people (everything a company does is done by its employees), in the end all taxes are paid for by people. Get yourself over the notion that corporate taxes are necessary and the Double Irish problem vanishes. Corporate taxes accomplish nothing which cannot be accomplished with different taxes.
Germany is complaining about countries with LOW corporate tax rates. The US has HIGH corporate tax rates.
Germany's corporate tax rate is about 15%.
The US corporate tax rate was 35% federal plus average 5% state = 40%, among the highest in the developed world. That's why most large "American" companies have their official tax headquarters and much of their operations in Europe - they'd rather pay 15% tax rather than 40%.
The tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) reduced the U.S. rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. Plus 5% state, so now it's 26%, still almost double the German rate.
The target of this is Ireland. Though their nominal rate is 12.5%, they allow BER that results in an effective rate around 1%.
The US would LOVE for Europe to have higher rates, similar to the US, so that "American" companies like Dell, Apple and Amazon would have less incentive to pay their taxes in Ireland, instead paying them in (and to) the US.
The problem is, most every country other than the US recognizes that receiving tax revenue is a good thing, and having people invest in factories, fabs, etc is good for your country. As Barak Obama said "if you want people to do less of something, tax it". The US taxes investment. They have high taxes on factories, fabs, development centers - companies - because apparently they want people to do less building of companies in the US. Other countries aren't so stupid. They WANT companies like Dell, Google, and Apple to put their operations in their countries, so they don't tax the hell of that like the US does.
"susbstantial digital revenue in Europe, based on overall revenue in Europe and not just profits."
;)
They want to tax gross revenue (before expenses) instead of net revenue (after expenses). To add a tax component as if it is a true expense.
The second issue is who would do this? The cost and overhead of implementation would overwhelm any ability to monitor the system. Each and every layer of every government involved would be skimming extra off the top for themselves. Much of the funds would just disappear in most countries. Heck in the US now no one in government can really tell anyone what the budget is and where funds flow to and from. Everything is just a poor guess designed to protect/cover who ever is currently in power.
Next, how would they share it? Based on population? So the western economies would be sending a wad of cash to India and China?
Last, they are just talking about the big tech companies now. But the real goal is all businesses/employee pay checks in every country. Well western countries/economies! But I am not to concerned because this will never happen. The only thing any group of counties can agree on is which country to stick the tab for dinner on.
Just my 2 cents
So far everything I have seen in this discussion (both above and below this 'insertion point' for this comment') has been mindless regurgitation of stupid lies and complaints about the lies. Just the place for an appeal to first principles in search of a well reasoned debate. ROFLMAO.
What we have now are tax systems that reward corporate cancers for becoming as huge and cancerous as possible. Insofar as there is any pretense of justification, it always comes down to "bigger is better", so the profits MUST increase.
I regard that as an insane anti-solution in search of a real problem. There will NEVER be any profit that "solves" the fake problem because there is always a larger number. Cancers always kill their hosts. In this case, corporate cancers will eventually kill the societies that are hosting them. Or maybe they already have, and we're just walking dead and about to discover that our extinction is the natural resolution of the Fermi Paradox.
Strangely enough, I think there is a solution, and the Germans seem to be on the right track. However I think it is better if your think in terms of pro-freedom anti-greedom taxation. As market share increases, so should the tax rate on your profits. This is NOT a penalty for success, but rather an incentive to split the company into competing companies that will take the good ideas into different directions, while simultaneously giving us MORE choices and MORE freedom. The basic objective (per my sig) should be to make sure there are around 3 to 7 choices in play for each shopping decision, not the 1 or 2 choices that the profit maximizers demand.
What we have now is a pro-greedom taxation system. America just has the greediest and most dysfunctional version of it.
Time's up, so I bid you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
> But what happens when Ireland responds to this act by ...
Right, if Ireland is smart, they'll keep doing what they've been doing - complying with the letter of the agreements, while arranging for very low taxes to attract business. Then Germany will complain some more. Rinse and repeat. There's one major way this can end, and another minor option. Eventually Germany could get tired of it and say "fine - two can play that game!" and reduce their own tax rates on production. Then they'd be shocked to find that production moves to their country, and they end up with higher tax revenue as the end result of lower tax rates - something Ireland figured out a long time ago.
The other thing that could happen would be a diplomatic deal in which Ireland raises rates in exchange for Germany and others doing something for Ireland. There are lots of things that could be bargained, but they'd find something that is good for Ireland, but Germany doesn't want to do because it's not so good for them. Whatever the details, that would boil down to "okay we'll agree to be stupid about our tax rates if you give us a billion dollars a year".
Obviously the first option is a lot better for Germany, but it would involve German leaders admitting they were mistaken. That can be tough to do.
> And if Ireland doesn't do it, then someone else will. Because of governments' ability to create corporate incentives -- there's literally no way to ban tax havens
Right. More specifically, because the tax code is tens of thousands of pages long, some clever lawyers will always find a way for lawmakers to put in loopholes that attract businesses. Anything nearly that complex has hundreds of places it can be manipulated, playing chapter 4, section 27 ,paragraph b against chapter 8, section 112, paragraph d.
The only way to change that is to make the tax law vastly simpler, deleting 99.9% of it. BUT that's not likely to happen because the ability to add bits and pieces to the tax code is a big part of politicians' power. Want to help electric car companies, either because you're a greenie or because your brother owns one? Add a tax incentive. Want to help solar panel research centers, either because you believe in it or because your mentor and largest donor owns one? Add some credits to the tax code. The politicians are unlikely to give up their power to keep adding crap to the tax laws unless and until the people as a whole are absolutely fed up and clearly demand it.
Then they'd be shocked to find that production moves to their country, and they end up with higher tax revenue as the end result of lower tax rates - something Ireland figured out a long time ago.
Merely moving production into Germany is not sufficient for that outcome.
Ezekiel 23:20
Loss of the ability to tax economic activity is fast becoming the world's #2 problem, after climate. The US exerts vast effort trying to punish Iran, Russia, Cuba and others for alleged bad behavior and cajoles others to do the same, when the countries that really should be targeted are tax havens like Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Panama and Ireland.
Get a passport, get out of bumfuck Idaho, and do it yourself. Doubt you have better to do anyway.
This is the same as the second response (they can pound sand), only it's more direct, and to the point.
It certainly is NOT a trollish comment.
Seriously, Germany, go fuck yourself.
Uh, since when and by whose definition does liberal = anti-capital?
You just made that shit up from whole cloth.
Problem:
Your country's taxes on production are higher than other countries, so businesses don't put their production in your country.
Solution:
Raise your taxes even higher, to make extra sure no business happens there.
Yes, some people really do think that way, so I'm not sure if you're a parody or a liberal.
Germany taxes production, so more production means more tax revenue, until their rate approaches that of Ireland.
> I also propose a 5% gross wealth tax on accrued resources to incentivize reinvestment. This will also prevent the own a billion in stock but never sold
So suppose you wanted to invest $100 milion to build a next-generation battery development complex and factory, and perhaps a factory to build electric cars. You get some other investors together and would set up an electric car company; perhaps you'd call it Alset.
You'd all own the company, each having a certain amount of stock. If the company spends your $100 million on equipment, for the first few years the company is worth about $100 million. If it has four equal investors, each has stock worth about $25 million as you try to develop the product and establish the company.
You propose to tax that $100 million of accrued resources at 5% per year, so every year the new company needs to sell off 5% of their equipment, building, and furniture, in order to pay the tax. You've proposed an orderly method of deconstructing a nation, of unbuilding civilization and returning to the stone age over a period of 100 years or so.
Ideally, what you want people to do with their resources (money) is two major things. First, you want them to feed themselves, to provide for their own family's needs. A nation of cannibals soon starves, obviously. That may seem obvious, and perhaps it is, but there's one thing some people forget - that's still true over age 60 - you want people living off their own savings, not cannibalizing their children's production. Second, you want them to put any extra resources to work producing more resources. You want any extra money to buy tractors, factories, laboratories, and semiconductor fabs, not lattes and other things that dissapear. Investment, not consumption.
So your ideal situation is for people to first take care of their family's needs. Then invest resources so your country can have things like fabs and labs, leaving that investment out producing more until they retire, then using the gains to continue to take care of their needs and not cannibalize the production of current workers.
Economists call this the "savings rate" and it's one of the best predictors of success for a country. Countries where people save and invest do well. Countries where people consume rather than save go broke.
Every developed nation in the world, save one, recognizes this and strongly encourages investment. One developed nation used to strongly recognize it and to some extent still does, but also has a large group of uneducated populace currently being fed a bunch of recycled Lenin propaganda and starting to believe that the United States should follow the path that worked out so well for the Soviet Union.
While I agree with the basic facts of your overall argument, I believe this particular sentence could stand to be expanded:
> Because to own the "means of production", you have to fucking TAKE it from the current owners - which requires an authoritarian state to accomplish.
The current owners, the people who own the means of production, are primarily all the people who checked the box saying yes, they do want to participate in their employer 's 401k. Together they own about $4 trillion of "means of production".
If you want to own the means of production, you CAN get a machine gun and go join up with your local copy of Juan Bautista Fuenmayor to fight in the revolution. A much easier, and generally more effective, way is to simply email HR and ask them how to sign up for the 401k plan. You can start with 3% of your pay and set it to increase by 1% each year - less than the raise you'll probably get. Bonus here is that you're aquiring the measurements of production using *pretax* money - basically the for every $3 you use, the government buys you another $1 of ownership, free. The revolutionary machine gun has to be bought with whatever money is left after taxes, so the 401K is cheaper overall.
I really wish people would stop spending so much time *arguing* with socialists and communists and instead try to understand what they want, then help them get it. They want "the people", everyone, to own the means of production. Okay, Lenin aside, that's a reasonable thing to want. They just don't realize that about half of "the people" already DOES own the means of production, but it's a voluntary choice in the US. You get to decide whether you'd rather own the means of production, or own another latte.
A long time ago, really rich guys owned companies. That was individual ownership. Now, big companies are owned by a collective of thousands or millions of people. Your co-workers actually own companies. One antonym (opposite) of "individual" is "corporate". It means "a bunch of people, together". A corporation is a company owned by a bunch of people, by whoever wants to be part of it. All you gotta do is choose to join by checking the yes box for the 401k.
They need more of other people money to sustain their socialist paradise.
Tax the movement of money, not profits.
Tax both sides of all transactions - buying and selling, transferring money overseas or account to account.
no tax deductions.
cash gets taxed when it is withdrawn or deposited,
how to tax circulated cash, I dunno, maybe a high tax on cash to cover projected recirculation.
Go well
They cannot innovate, so they tax. It's been almost 30 years since the Web came into existence and Europeans have been sitting on their asses, fiercely committed to old economics. I bet they thought (hoped? Their recent take on copyright sure shows a willingness to turn back the clock) it would go away. They did nothing. Many young engineers in Europe were discouraged, turned down, they were told that the internet was a passing fad. Those who could and would moved to the US and joined in the new adventure. Those who did not wish they would have. Now Europe, incapable of competing, lashes back with bureaucracy and threats. Typical of European mindset, characterized by total risk aversion and immobilism. In the end, they will rue their foolish decisions, but it will be their citizens who will suffer the most. I'm sorry for you, Europeans. I'm sorry you're so mired in your past that you cannot appreciate the future.
The companies dodging the most tax are not the "digital companies" but the old style hardware companies.
Germany thus also subsidizes this way Siemens, Daimler, etc...
This problem has to be solved first.
https://www.industryweek.com/c...
aaaaaaa
Z^-1
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
ALL big tech pulls our of ALL EU countries. They pull all licenses for software, OS', etc per the agreements. Then, if companies and individuals refuse to do so, they start suing them in European courts.
See how the EU likes having to pay fines for a change
F the EU ripping off tech companies to bolster their bottom line
There are two types of income. There's income produced by labor, and income produced by investment.
Income gained by labor is called wages.
Income gained by re-investing the fruits of your labor is called profit.
A tax on profit is a tax on investment.
It's almost universally recognized, by every developed nation, that investment is key to a country's success, so heavy taxes on it are a bad idea.
There are two or three other major categories of things a country can tax. When people get money, they can either use it for investment or for consumption - either spend it on things that continue to bring value (houses, businesses), or on things that dissapear within a few years (lattes, Halloween costumes). Investment increases a nation's wealth, consumption decreases a nation's wealth, so most tax consumption, in order to encourage investment. A particular type of consumption tax is the sin tax - taxing particularly unhealthy consumption such as alcohol and tobacco.
Occasionally those who have been exposed to too much Lenin propaganda propose taxing wealth itself. This is not only on indirect tax on investment (wealth comes from investment), but worse, when the primary goal is to build a wealthy nation, directly taxing (discouraging) the goal is insane.
* For simplicity we'll momentarily ignore cases where the two are blended together, ie doctors invest in medical school, then labor.
** Another topic is non-tax revenue sources, which don't generally bring in enough revenue to matter much. Yesterday I saw a scratch-off lottery ticket that cost $50/ticket. This has been called "a tax on people who can't do math", but it is of course completely voluntary, so not actually a tax. Just a very sad thing.
What you said is true.
Also, we know that businesses make these decisions largely based on accountants and other nerds doing the math, to maximize after-tax profit. We're not comparing Germany with Cambodia, but rather two EU nation's. When Apple does $50 billion in EU sales each year, a ten percent difference in tax rates between two EU countries is probably going to be enough make the decision for them.
The way the math works out, until the tax rate of country A is close to the tax rate of similar competing country B, country A will have a net benefit by moving toward a competitive tax rate.
If you're competing on something OTHER THAN tax rate, the optimal revenue-generating tax rate can be very different. Germany can attract businesses in preference to Afghanistan in ways other than tax rate. Versus Ireland, they have to come close to matching the tax rate or else MOST or ALL multinationals will choose Ireland over Germany. You're guaranteed to lose the multi-national game when most or all multi-nationals stay away.
Am I explaining that where it makes sense? You have to fine tune up or down for maximum revenue when you're balancing "how many* multinationals your country has vs the rate they pay. When the rate is so high that you don't attract ANY large multi-nationals, revenue from them is zero and you need to reduce your rate until you attract some. In the case of an EU country, the rate which will attract some will be near the rate of the competing country which currently attracts some.
Similarly for the US and Canada. The two countries are similar enough that if one of them had a tax rate four times as high as the other, approximately all multinationals would choose the lower rate country. Therefore in order to attract any significant amount, the rates must be competitive.
I'm not sure if my explanation was clear, so let me mention a conversation I heard yesterday.
If you're trying to calculate the revenue-optimum sales tax on big screen televisions, it's not easy. Too high and you'll hurt revenue by drastically reducing how many people buy new large TVs. Too low and you've left potential revenue on the table. That's the concept you mentioned.
Some things are less murky, more clear.
Last night I was at a friend's house and on the television was the Dallas Cowboys football game. One guy made rhe comment "to beat the Cowboys, the Redskins will have to outscore them".* That drew some laughter because duh, you win football games by outscoring the opponent. That's always the case, it's a competition.
Same here - Germany is competing, on the numbers, with other EU countries. The *precise* optimum rate is debatable within a few percentage points, but clearly if they aren't close to their competition, they will lose.
One can guess how many points will be needed to win a football game, but you can't argue the fact that scoring much worse than your opponent will lose.
* What he meant was defense wouldn't win the game, the Cowboys would put up significant points, so the Redskins would need a high score, as opposed to trying to limit thr Cowboys to a low score.
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With the legal ruling allowing States to collect sales tax from sellers with no physical nexus in their states, the SCOTUS may have already set the stage for this. As long as the tech giants meet reasonable criteria for an "economic nexus", I can see Germany and others challenging in US courts. For example, South Dakota says if you ship over $100k or 200 orders to their state, you have an economic nexus in their state. We now have to spend thousands on special tax software to collect and file in 30+ states that we have no affiliation with other than shipping a resident packages through FedEx and USPS.
The EU was after that.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The 1% pay almost everything. What we really need is for the bottom 30 percent to at least pay something, and not expect to just take government services paid for by others.
Thatâ(TM)s like double speak straight out of Brave New World. Of course itâ(TM)s leftist politics.
8===D~`,'`,'
Just for you buddy.
Have you actually met any immigrants? Have you gone to those places?
Or just read whatever suited your existing views?
I've met a large amount of immigrants. Asylum seekers, guest workers and their children, random immigrants ... Nearly all of them eat pork now. And all of them, without exception, are much less religious. Even the bearded nutjobs with the burka'd wives behind them. Behind the scenes, they still drink alcohol and eat pork sausages etc.
And... and this is key ... most of them ALSO oppose nonsense like mentioned in the neocon-fascist propaganda outlet you linked to.
That's the main problem with the Nazis in this country: They are so damn DUMB, that they blindly gobble up and have to believe all the shit that's told do them. Reality literally doesn't bother them anymore. Like a religion. They can stand in front of hard facts, yet keep parroting what the yellow-brown toilet paper told them. Cognitive dissonance on the same level as IStards and Catholibans.
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Just had to come back to this thread to see what the trolls were so riled up about. Perhaps I should have spent more time "studying" their bits of drivel in search of some actual meaning buried in the BS. Deeply buried.
Easier to just step back and look at one of the (many) higher level problems of Slashdot.
If you're visiting Slashdot in search of a thoughtful and rational discussion of ANY of the deep issues at hand, then it certainly seems that you've come to the wrong place.
Perhaps you'll have better luck if you try again with one of those time machines Stephen Hawking wrote about? I haven't read that piece yet, but based on his other writings that I have read, I supposed its another multiverse thing where you avoid the infinite loop with the theory that some of the spawned new universes never develop the time machines. (But is it necessary to assume that the "some" has an upper bound before things go critical? No such thing as too many universes?)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Eeeeeeeee!
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X^7
reeeeeeeeee lol this is kind of fun. its like when you visit your grandpa at the home, and you see old people do and say some weird shit. im not so normal myself so ill probably end up old and senile like you too. gl gramps.
> This assumption is only valid if that equipment is sitting idle. That $100 million isn't sitting there idle so you don't have to sell the equipment to pay the tax rather you would pay the tax out of the revenue/profits.
You realize Tesla isn't profitable, right? It's been in operation for fifteen years trying to build a car company. 5% per year for 15% years = 75%. OP's proposal is that Tesla would have sold off 75% of their equipment and other assets so far in order to pay taxes on "having equipment".
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Can I get to 20!
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moron
reeeeeeee~~!
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do i get a prize at 20 or does it go to 100
?
Im feelin lucky!
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lol
I wonder which one of us is having more fun
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skeet skeet
Your assumption is that ad supported platforms cost nothing.
It's not an assumption, it's a fact.
Google and Facebook are selling *something* for billions of dollars. That *something* originates in Germany. So just because no money crosses the border into Germany, it's still obvious that Google and Facebook are selling a German resource.
The idea that your eyeballs are a resource belonging to your country is absolutely retarded. And more than a little creepy.
This assumption that ad supported platforms are *free* needs to end.
Again, not an assumption.
Your attention and your privacy are obviously very valuable as companies are willing to spend billions of dollars for it.
If this were true you could get authors to pay you to read their books instead of the other way around.
The fact of the matter is that YOUR attention and privacy aren't valuable in the slightest. You obviously don't value them since you are giving them away. Nobody else really values them either or they would offer to buy them from you directly. The only time they become at all valuable is as an aggregate of the attention and privacy of millions of other nobodies like you. As a group you become valuable because I know that if I hit you all with an advertisement, some of you will buy my shit. And yet despite this greater whole having value to advertisers, it still costs you nothing to use an ad supported platform.
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aww you missed one. pansy.
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Yay you got it. +1 persistence.
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Z^+SKEET
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