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Technology giants face European 'digital tax' blow
Big technology firms face paying more tax under plans announced by the European Commission. It said companies with significant online revenues should pay a 3% tax on turnover for various online services, bringing in an estimated €5bn (£4.4bn). The proposal would affect firms such as Facebook and Google with global annual revenues above €750m and taxable EU revenue above €50m.
The move follows criticism that tech giants pay too little tax in Europe. EU economics affairs commissioner Pierre Moscovici said the "current legal vacuum is creating a serious shortfall in the public revenue of our member states". He stressed it was not a move against the US or "GAFA" - the acronym for Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. According to the Commission, top digital firms pay an average tax rate of just 9.5% in the EU - far less than the 23.3% paid by traditional companies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 22 2018, @04:55PM (11 children)
Also, you can't get funnier funding than extracting resources from people at the point of a gun.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday March 22 2018, @05:20PM (10 children)
Let us all shed a tear for the GAFA, forced at the point of a gun to conduct unprofitable business in countries with oppressive taxation...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 22 2018, @05:41PM (9 children)
You really think that it makes sense to organization society around black-box, lump-sum, ad-hoc, largely arbitrary and capricious percentages? Why should Apple's success be a government's success? Why should this one particular organization in society (the one that calls itself "government") get a cut?
This way of organizing society is an old, tired, and objectively stupid idea. It traces its roots back to the "duty" that one had to pay to a conquering overlord (who often claimed to be divine, and thus surrounded himself with pledges of allegiance, sacred symbols, collective hymns, anthems, colored flags, rituals, holidays, special animals, etc.). It's time for society to move past it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday March 22 2018, @06:06PM (8 children)
One: You didn't address the point.
Two: Not everyone views their governments as an oppressive almost-foreign force. People regularly demonstrating in the European streets tend to demand that the government act in their (often narrow-minded) interest. European laws force companies to treat workers as (mostly) human, and not just use and discard them like every other commodity that proves occasionally useful to the bottom line. Are they often going too far? Yep. Is the opposite really that much better? Knowing people from both sides, I can tell you the middle-class Europeans are a lot less worried about the fundamentals: disease, educating their children, and their own retirement. Pay high taxes, lose some opportunities, get a more peaceful life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 22 2018, @07:16PM (7 children)
Also, the other AC's reply works just as well here, meaning you've not made any point.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday March 22 2018, @07:28PM (6 children)
> > > > Let us all shed a tear for the GAFA, forced at the point of a gun to conduct unprofitable business in countries with oppressive taxation...
> Also, the other AC's reply works just as well here, meaning you've not made any point.
I'll translate for the dim-witted: Those companies want the profit, but not the constraints.
If the EU is so terrible and destroys your local benefits with oppressive taxes, why sell there at all? Just stay on the West Coast, sell to the Chinese, the Africans ... who's forcing you to go through the unbearable pain of selling in the EU?
Ah? You like the money stash to be made in the richest market on the planet, but want to cheat the rules other companies comply with. What does that make you? A thief, at best.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 22 2018, @07:43PM (5 children)
Why is there a dispute at all?
It's because the reasoning behind the interaction between Apple and the State makes no sense; it's arbitrary and capricious, because the system is inherently arbitrary and capricious.
Also, the "government" is making those arguments on behalf of millions of other people who may not want such representation. That facet of the dispute is also a result of the loosey-goosey nature of this system of social organization.
There's this massive, block-box, opaque, one-size-fits-all, arbitrary and capricious, resource-commandeering thing sitting atop the interactions of millions of people. It's weird and very stupid, and these endless disputes over "fair share" are the inevitable result of that weirdness and stupidity.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday March 22 2018, @08:33PM (4 children)
Every multi-million-people human society has a government, and every government needs funding to operate.
What's your proposition ? Peer-to-peer contracts enforced by the guy with the most henchmen?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 22 2018, @08:46PM (3 children)
Cut the funding first. Then we'll talk. I'm not interested when the government is taking 50%. That's happening in large parts of Europe and parts of the US.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 22 2018, @09:26PM
Wow, you're a bigger moron than anyone realized.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @02:57AM (1 child)
The problem seems to be that an overwhelming part of people living in Europe agree and support the idea of payinng high taxes which the goverments bounce back at them in the shape of public benefits and social assets. Again, this probably is a conseguence of people not seeing the goverment as an oppressive entity that works against them but instead as an ally.
If GAFA do not like it, they can just leave. Rest asured no tears will be shed for them. I love it that the EU is not USA, for many reasons.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 24 2018, @05:43AM
We already see a number of countries in Europe that are no longer managing that, such as the "PIGS". And immigration policy already is a mess because those public benefits and "social assets" need taxes from young workers to cover. If your population isn't growing them, then you need to import them.