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France Considers Raising Taxes on Internet Giants (reuters.com)
France's Finance Minister has drafted a new law to tax internet giants, reports Reuters:
A three percent tax on the French revenue of large internet companies could yield 500 million euros [$568 million U.S. dollars or £429 million] per year, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Sunday. Le Maire told Le Parisien newspaper the tax is aimed at companies with worldwide digital revenue of at least 750 million and French revenue of more than 25 million euros.
He said the tax would target some 30 companies, mostly American, but also Chinese, German, Spanish and British, as well as one French firm and several firms with French origins that have been bought by foreign companies. The paper listed Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple (the four so-called "GAFA" companies) but also Uber, Airbnb, Booking and French online advertising specialist Criteo as targets. "A taxation system for the 21st century has to built on what has value today, and that is data," Le Maire said. He added it is also a matter of fiscal justice, as the digital giants pay some 14 percentage points less tax than European small-and-medium sized companies.
The draft law will be presented to the cabinet on Wednesday, and then presented to France's parliament, Reuters reports.
"The tax would also target the sales of personal data for advertising purposes."
He said the tax would target some 30 companies, mostly American, but also Chinese, German, Spanish and British, as well as one French firm and several firms with French origins that have been bought by foreign companies. The paper listed Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple (the four so-called "GAFA" companies) but also Uber, Airbnb, Booking and French online advertising specialist Criteo as targets. "A taxation system for the 21st century has to built on what has value today, and that is data," Le Maire said. He added it is also a matter of fiscal justice, as the digital giants pay some 14 percentage points less tax than European small-and-medium sized companies.
The draft law will be presented to the cabinet on Wednesday, and then presented to France's parliament, Reuters reports.
"The tax would also target the sales of personal data for advertising purposes."
We do not want to become like the EU. Mr. President, you have the nation's support.
Giving a government more money is like giving booze to an alcoholic.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
The French have fast trains. The US does not.
The French have access to health insurance regardless of means -- if you lose your job and get sick, you won't end up deep in medical debt.
French universities are covered by the government, no need to save $200,000 in school funds starting when your kid is born.
What does the US have? Endless war, mass incarceration -- the money is used to do violence instead of helping fellow Americans.
France defaults to extra big taxation. Invest in France and enjoy that extra big tax. Who in France is getting all the new tax spending?
People who need healthcare, people who enjoy decent public transportation and high-speed trains, people who work to live and not live to work?
Is this a new purview of the French government, to dispense fiscal justice? I assume there will be no juries or trials, making the French fiscal justice system a dictatorship?
Every country on the planet creates their own tax laws, with their own arbitrary rules. Any company that chooses to operate in a country is obliged to follow those laws, for better or worse. If they don't like it, they are free to leave or stop doing business altogether. That's literally how it has always been, everywhere. This is nothing new.
If they could raise prices 3% with no consequences, they would have already done it. That's a given. So no, they will not simply raise prices. It may change the optimal price/volume point, and so indirectly change prices (which could be up or down, if they want to claw back profits by volume, they may reduce prices).
You fail to consider the market for FB services. It is not what the users are *paying*, it is what advertisers are. It is business oriented, so the elasticity of demand and the power to negotiate is significantly better than what a consumer has. So, believe me, nothing close to full passing of the tax is even close to happening. And since the amount is not even all that big, it ain't getting passed on the consumer at all.
Not to mention that if a service is a monopoly, then regulation should not be optional, but mandatory. Monopolies are always bad.
Riddle me this... the places in the US that pride themselves on "light regulations" also tend to have the highest incarceration rates. Whereas incarceration rates in Europe tend to be 1/3 to 1/4 of the US average with similar or lower violent crime rates. If the US puts so many people in prison (proportional to population), is it really so lightly regulated?
The difference is that Europe is somewhat more economically regulated than the US, but those regulations generally affect larger corporations, not the average citizen. The US is home of Draconian social regulations that put people in prison, ruin their lives with arrest records, etc and so forth.
But from a profit perspective, it is usually preferable for the company to pass the tax on rather than simply eating it.
Their problem is they cannot do it, for reasons the explainer made clear, which shows that you have not read it.
The obvious example is if the seller currently only has a 2% profit margin, and you impose a 3% revenue tax on them. Obviously they're not going to eat the tax since that would mean they'll be losing money with each sale. The only way they can continue to sell and stay in business is by passing part or all of that tax on to consumers.
Yes, a part of the tax may be passed on, but it will definitely not be the full amount, and how much the company will "eat" will depend on demand elasticity. If the company attempts to raise the price, and the demand is elastic (which it always is), the demand facing that company (and that market) will fall to a point where only the customers that are prepared to pay the new full amount will participate in the market. The consumers that will not be buying the service will not be paying the tax. Typically for elastic (flat) demand curve, that will mean a large loss of market share, which to most companies is unacceptable.
You're assuming the goal of a business is to maintain their pre-tax revenue and sales. It's not. It's to maximize their profit (profit = revenue - costs).
If you seriously think a company only looks at the profits, and not at market share it commands and its growth potential, you simply don't know how companies work. Sales, share and growth are numbers that any company cares about a lot, and it will routinely sacrifice profits to achieve a sales, market share or growth target. That is why a company which risks to lose a significant share will think hard before passing taxes on.
Therefore a tax is practically never passed on in full, especially in the long run.
It's not a sudden need. It's just these companies have managed to shirk their responsibilities until now. As the summary notes, up until now Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple are effectively subsidized by French small and medium sized companies while siphoning money out of France.
The key word is not "3%" nor is it "Internet giants" - the key word is revenue.
This is what should've happened a decade ago. Taxing revenue instead of profits puts a clean shot right between the eyes of the majority of tax evasion schemes. It's a step long overdue.
And before the typical neo-conservative trolls shout it down: Remember that everyone BUT corporations is taxed by revenue, not profits. My income tax is based on my income, not on what's left at the end of the month. And so is yours. If we can survive that type of taxation, so can multinational corporations.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Dear Government,
we all know that the big IT companies do not pay taxes in the EU, as some countries (e.g., Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany) do not really try to tax them, look the other way when they avoid taxes etc. I know that Germany is afraid someone (the US) could start taxing German cars, but:
(a) the car industry is only 4.5% of Germans GDP.
(b) they are ignoring modern trends for decades now, they had it coming and they need to change. The US taxing them could actually help.
(c) we can easily make up by taxes from these companies.
(d) it support diversity in the market. This is important to have a real market economy and not a capitalistic nightmare with monopolies.
(e) this Trump person will blackmail you with the car industry anyway and as the German public is not interested in paying more for the defense budget, especially since this part of the government is run so badly, the Trump will tax that industry sooner rather than later.
So please come to your senses and tax these Internet companies.
Thank you!
Nothing corrupt about noticing that a bunch of companies are all pulling the same tax-dodge and trying to do something about it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC