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.

Comments

Re: Tax on the final sale is the only way to do it

[c6gunner]

So why should it be taxes? Facebook is costing German users literally nothing. It's providing them with a service they want at no cost, and paying for that service by selling advertisements to non-german companies. And Germany thinks its entitled to a piece of that? Why?

There's no rational way to justify it. The only reason they can give is "because we want that money". They can try to dress it up by talking about tax shelters and "big business" and shit, but at the end of the day it just boils down to the fact that they see someone out there in the world with money, and they want to take it for themselves. Just like bandits have always done.

Re: Time for pro-freedom anti-greedom taxation?

[MachineShedFred]

So the better a company does, the higher a rate of taxes they pay on that success? And if they are barely above water, the tax rate is less?

How is that not punishing success again?