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Google Now Pays More Money in EU Fines Than it Pays in Taxes (computing.co.uk)
An anonymous reader writes: Google owner Alphabet has reported annual and quarterly revenues up again, largely on the back of increasing market share in online advertising. The company reported fourth quarter revenues up 22 per cent to $39.28 billion, while annual revenues were up 23 per cent to $136.8 billion. And the company also took the time to separate out "European Commission fines" in its consolidated statements of income in the company's accounts. These increased from $2.7 billion in 2017 to $5.1 billion in 2018, with a further 50 million euro already set to be added to the bill for its first quarter and 2019 accounts, thanks to French data protection authority CNIL.That fine compares to a provision for income taxes of just $4.2 billion for 2018, or 12 per cent of its pre-tax income.
Net income for the full year increased by a 143 per cent from $12.67 billion to $30.74 billion thanks largely to a radically lower provision for income taxes - down from $14.5 billion to just $4.2 billion. The company attributed this tax boost down to the US Tax Act of 2017, which had depressed net income in 2017. This had "resulted in additional tax expense of $9.9 billion in the fourth quarter of 2017, primarily due to the one-time transition tax on accumulated foreign subsidiary earnings and deferred tax effects", the company claimed in its earnings release.
Net income for the full year increased by a 143 per cent from $12.67 billion to $30.74 billion thanks largely to a radically lower provision for income taxes - down from $14.5 billion to just $4.2 billion. The company attributed this tax boost down to the US Tax Act of 2017, which had depressed net income in 2017. This had "resulted in additional tax expense of $9.9 billion in the fourth quarter of 2017, primarily due to the one-time transition tax on accumulated foreign subsidiary earnings and deferred tax effects", the company claimed in its earnings release.
From the article, one cannot tell what the fines are attributable to. For example, if the fines are in fact a form of back-pay on some of the taxes, then the comparison doesn't really make much sense. Google is presumably run by rational people who are working to optimize their bottom line.
Ho ho.
Are their accountants doing their job? Clearly their lawyers need more practice, or is that the Bag Men who've dropped the ball?
It was obvious that Europe can not use their tax laws to go after Google (and other American tech companies), so, they were going to use their laws with MASSIVE fines. I had to laugh when somebody gripped about America fining VW 2.8B for their lying and polluting, while Europe will make up fake fines which are much higher against these companies and use it on their coffers.
Yeah, because American mega-corps are such a nice honest salt-of-the-earth bunch people who never cheat on their taxes. I'm pretty sure the people running US corporations are the exact same species of greedy sociopathic assholes as their European colleagues. I for one despise them all equally.
You've concluded Europe doesn't have the right to their own privacy laws. You're the world's dumbest faggot for the moment. Amazing, congratulations.
Windbourne, world's dumbest faggot everybody. A round of applause, the moron thinks Europe can't have their own laws. He's that dumb.
They're "You're making too much, we're going to invent a reason you're bad, and retroactively fine you to fund our pork projects!" taxes.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Windbourne, world's dumbest faggot everybody. A round of applause, the moron thinks Europe can't have their own laws. He's that dumb.
EU is pulling a fast one to get their coffers full by raiding American companies. They have no intention of raiding their own companies. BUT, the real issue is that there are so many tax loopholes all over the world, combined with brick/mortar vs internet vs service. Western nations are having difficulty. What is needed is for the western nations to get together, perhaps at G12, and discuss how to deal with taxation of companies.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Huxley, when you're feeling retarded and chatty at the same time, which is most of the time, try this instead : Open the oven, turn it on. Let the fumes come for a full minute, all up into your worthless child's brain. Then stay there. Trust me.
It will be at least as productive as what you're doing now, you fucking idiot. Die in a fire. Take Windbourne with you. The world doesn't need you morons. Nobody does. You're too stupid to continue existing, I'm very sorry. Godspeed. Die.
So as the US Federal Government goes deeper into debt to fund Corporate Tax Breaks, the EU gladly hands down fines to collect the dollars those same companies are NOT paying in infrastructure reinvestment, average worker wages and benefits.
What part of Reaganomics "trickledown" lead to raising taxes on the middle class 11 times in Reagan's 8 years are lost on people. Stop buying the "trickledown" lies.
Windbourne, world's dumbest faggot everybody. A round of applause, the moron thinks Europe can't have their own laws. He's that dumb.
ANOTHER contender for world's dumbest faggot everybody! Another round of applause, another inbred moron thinks Europe can't have their own privacy laws. You can't make this stuff up, Republicans literally are this retarded now.
They think they make the rules in Europe too, lol. Pity the inbred morons, they don't understand why they can't be kings and instead are worthless uneducated pawns.
The US government has made it very clear that American jobs are not going to be protected. We've lost our ability to scale our industrial base and are being eaten out from the insides by parasitic kleptocrats.
Trump is right that we're being invaded by foreigners. But it's not the lowly farm hands from Latin America. It's European-Russian-Chinese-Korean industrist. Sadly all the sorts of people Trump loves to hobknob with.
...America is controlled by a Putin Puppet...
Stopped reading right there. /dev/null
Take your slanderous assertions without evidence nor citations and shove 'em into
Aww, you poor little baby. Are you butt-hurt for ahuxley making a spot-on comment about the communists in the EU? Apparently so since you are communist yourself. Soon the welfare programs will cease and you will either have to find a job or starve to death.
You subtly acknowledge that the European countries are no longer sovereign states, but puppets of Brussels.
"Isn't the US economy doing pretty well?" If Trump turning 8 years of growth into a recession is "pretty well" then sure. Shutting down the gov, trade wars, highest trade imbalance ever, corporate tax cut did nothing... great job.
Are you illiterate or just financially so?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/most-cfos-see-a-u-s-recession-coming-by-2020/
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/05/us-headed-for-recession-in-2019-as-fed-raises-rates-economist-warns.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/raulelizalde/2018/12/17/another-warning-that-a-2019-recession-is-coming/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/12/20/feature/a-recession-is-coming-trump-is-going-to-make-the-recovery-worse/
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/housing-market-recession-coming-224827298.html
Gee, actually the problem for Trump is there IS tons of evidence he's Putin's puppet, and his weak faggoty lies in denial didn't help. He's caught, hanged.
they are NOT being fined for taxes. They are being fined for all sorts of BS that their own companies do, but it is not illegal....
Such as? ... please enlighten us by elaborating and providing some citations to weasel stuff that European Corpocrats do but American ones would never dream of doing because they are such honest salt-of-the-earth people.
Google, just move the fuck out of the EU. Move all operations because it seems like the EU just has a hard-on for Google.
should block all foreign internet, ALL OF IT, and let the rest of the world wonder what happened to the internet for a few weeks, and watch what they say and do, i am sure it will have a dramatic effect since the biggest root servers that make all the domain names are located in the USA
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
A bunch of journalists see a recession coming, eventually, maybe, in a couple of years. Right. Is that as reliable as the "magic wand" they said was needed to grow the economy when Trump got elected?
Fuck Google, and fuck the lack of competition in general. There are too few companies to compete against Google, and it seems to be reasonless. There aren't enough attempts to even try. They've really done nothing magical, nothing special. Their claim to fame is Android, which is based on Linux. And Chrome is for suckers who don't mind sharing their personal information.
Economists and CFOs, if you learn to read. Experts. Not idiots like yourself. The journalists tabulated the data and statements. You're too dumb for this topic perhaps, like Donald.
Windbourne, world's dumbest faggot everybody. A round of applause, the moron thinks Europe can't have their own laws. He's that dumb.
I know you are trolling, but do you really think the potential for generating revenue due to violations of these privacy laws wasn't a driving factor behind the politicians who put those privacy laws into place, or do you really think they were looking out for the little guy?
I think it's not provable unless you delve, and you're not doing that. However it's also irrelevant because they have the right to have laws! Google plays in their country's sandbox, not the other way around. Google != Sovereign.
If they were really not wanting to pay the fines they'd ADDRESS THE VIOLATIONS OF LAW, which wouldn't be impossible and everyone else has to do it also, OR STOP OPERATING IN EUROPE. Them's the breaks kid.
They choose to pay. They make massive profits anyway. Now if they only fix their models to protect user privacy over their multifaceted interconnected empire of data collection "for advertising" -wink, THEY WOULD BE ALL SET.
Stop apologizing for a massive profit just because a country wanted to enforce their laws SLIGHTLY in the process. It's retarded. And no, I'm 100% not trolling.
That idiot windbourne literally seems to think EU can't have different laws than the US, or what Google would prefer. Fuck him back to a Lego movie, he's an idiot. Completely not trolling, 100% serious.
Capiche?
I said country, I meant EU commission, same concepts apply. Sovereign lawmakers are allowed to enforce their standards, and frankly the GDPR is not unreasonable, it's very much the future world standard and current gold standard.
When big corporations like Google refuse to pay their fair share in taxes and funnel money into shell corporations so they can claim losses to evade taxes, there's only so much you can do to make them pay up. I don't exactly agree with every fine the EU has imposed but it is clearly an effective way to make them pay their part. I only hope the U.S. smartens up and follows suite.
There is something seriously wrong in how these multinational powerhouses are taxed if its cheeper to pay fines than paying tax...
Im sure some are crying they should not be taxed but the fact is they are making containerships full of cash from us and should pay tax not just dividends to a select few!
https://www.businessinsider.co...
not compared to the profits let alone the cost of running a government and associated services. If google can get out of paying taxes for fines they're way, way ahead.
You're dead right about trickle down economics. Here in the states we changed the name to "Job Creators" and that stuck. Never underestimate the power of think tanks & focus groups.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
"I do not blame ANY of these companies for there actions"
So, do you blame them for here actions, instead?
Otherwise they would have changed to conform with the law.
they are NOT being fined for taxes. They are being fined for all sorts of BS that their own companies do, but it is not illegal.
Yeah actually in the EU it is illegal which is why they got fined.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
Imagine if all of Europe suddenly was cut off from Google Services, Gmail, Maps, and the Play Store. I'm tired of foreign countries attempting to hurt American companies.
Are you aware that there is actually a movement in the US that people sign up to to remove Google from their online lives? If Europe was cut off from Google Services they'd just use one of the plethora of alternatives. Remember the only reason you have the WWW and that Google exists at all is thanks to the British creator of HTML and the European foundation CERN.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
Sorry. Did you have anything cogent to say?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Tell that to the guys in the EU trying to regulate the length of candle wicks.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Not paying any in fines is very easy. As well is it easier to pay the morally correct amount of taxes.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Give me a name and I will.
Remember the only reason you have the WWW and that Google exists at all is thanks to the British creator of HTML and the European foundation CERN.
Do you really think nobody else would've figured out how to transmit formatted text over the internet?
That's like saying aliens wouldn't have rockets because Wernher von Braun lived on Earth.
In the 90s, everybody was investing in Russia, even McDonald's had a huge restaurant built in Moscow. Learn some history - anyone who was an investor of any kind saw it as a new market like how China and India had runs a few years later. Trump isn't the problem, he's actually trying to fix the offshoring and the current bear market in China is hurting the investments of some powerful people. The problem is that not just the jobs left, but the factories and skills as well. A nearly complete restart of industry is required. It'll be expensive, but that's why a one-time repatriation of funds is allowed at a low tax rate.
Case in point, how many machinists do you know? Those are the toolmakers. It's a skilled craft that can be aided by robotics, but not entirely replaced by them.
If Google pulled out of the EU then the shareholders would revolt and the greatest corporate shitstorm ever known would ensue. The EU market is vast and highly profitable. Quitting is just leaving huge sums of money on the table.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
that's not saying much since they nearly pay no taxes at all.
..They are being fined for all sorts of BS that their own companies do, but it is not illegal....
What are you talking about? I said that BOTH Americans and European companies are doing this stuff, it is just that the European govs are going after the American companies.
You suggested that the EU is unfairly fining US companies and not fining European ones for getting up to the exact same shenannigans the US companies are pulling, or, in other words the usual: Bwwwaaaaaaaahhhhhh. UNFAIR!!! ... whining that seems to be so in vogue with US conservatives these days.
Here are some companies that have been fined by the EU for all kinds of dirty tricks over the last few decades:
Daimler (German)
Scania (Swedish)
DAF (Dutch)
Saint Gobain (French)
Philips (Dutch)
LG Electronics (South Korean)
Volvo/Renault (Swedish/French)
Iveco (Italian)
Deutsche Bank (German)
F. Hoffmann-La Roche (Swiss)
The list is much, much longer and it consists of many European and Asian companies. The EU is not singling out US companies for 'unfair' treatment, it's more that US companies get away with murder in the US, with the help of US politicians to screw the US public, and they think they can get away with it everywhere else too. Well think again.
Yeah actually in the EU it is illegal which is why they got fined.
Well it's illegal in the USA as well. However the prosecutors don't go after companies for antitrust laws without actual proven dollar value impact on specified consumers, a bar which is incredibly high to meet.
Don't you ever tell the truth WindBourne?
Show some examples of these lies you are claiming...
I do not blame ANY of these companies for there actions.
Don't they teach proper English in India?
Why constantly make shit up?
Can you ever back up anything that you say?
Please believe my lies, it's all I've got.
Well that it news to me I always belivedthat it is themember states that do the taxsation, foes the EU realy tax any entety directly? Inthis context thas is impotant because if the EU dos not tax anyone, butissues fines it wouldbe rather easyto pat themmoreinfinesthan i taxes.
As Zen boy shows, the top 5 fines against companies come against American companies .5B, but apparently, so does Qualcomm and now, the EU justice. .5B for killing ppl, but otherwise doing the same thing? No. That makes no sense.
Lets look at them.
1) Microsoft was fined more than Servier, who likely cost ppl's lives. Please.
2) Good with going after Qualcomm/Apple. I do think that 1.2B was excessive considering that Servier was
3) Intel being charged 1.45 B for lowering their price to get others to use Intel over AMD? Please. That is pure competition at work. Thankfully, EU Justice is look at it, and will likely either kill it or cut it way down
4) Totally great with EU going after Google for the Google shopping. That entire episode is the very definition of monopoly abuse, just like Servier was. Of course, 2.7B strikes me as excessive considering that BOTH Servier and Telefónica were fined about 1/6 and 1/10 of that. However, there is no doubt that all 3 were abusive monopolies.
5) Then you have the recent Android action. Google allows you to install android, as you see fit.
HOWEVER, if you want Google's help AND Play store, then you have to agree to install Google's apps. I see nothing wrong with that.
Of course, paying them to install only Google's android as well as search is an issue. BUT, $5B, when they charge servier
So, yeah, this IS about going after American tech companies.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
good posting. Thanx.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If you don't like the rules, then don't do business in those places. It's that fucking simple. It must be worth it and profitable or they would have pulled out like your mom should have.
Don't attribute malice to that which is most likely caused by just not giving a fuck.
Biggest fines for the biggest companies, who exactly is supposed to be surprised?
Now like you claimed, show European companies getting away with not being fined for the same things.
Of course you can't, your just full of shit.
So you couldn't find even 1 example of what you claimed.
Where are European companies getting away with the things US companies are being fined for?
You think what Intel did to AMD was all ok. No wonder you 'think' the way you do on most things.
In all things.
Suck up everyone's money, make all your profits overseas, pay no tax at home. Just sell to low tax countries.
Act surprised when the trade deficit tripples from it's already record highs.
That's like complaining Americans spend more time in jail than church. Of course they do they are criminals.
Dame with those companies, they pay more in fines than taxes because they are breaking the law.
That's like complaining Americans spend more time in jail than church. Of course they do they are criminals.
Same with those companies, they pay more in fines than taxes because they are breaking the law.