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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: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 22 2018, @06:26PM (16 children)
I understand it quite fine. It's just not a contract. It's a collective exploitation of everyone that usually is more trouble to contest than to go along with.
A biological analogy is a tapeworm infection. An infection is a lot of trouble to get rid of. You have to ingest a poison (which happens to be more toxic to the tapeworm than to you). But if you're not actively ingesting poison to get rid of that tapeworm? Then you have a "social contract" with the tapeworm.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 22 2018, @06:42PM (7 children)
Somehow I wonder if you were educated in public schools (even private schools use public money is some ways) or grew up on the streets with no education.
I think perhaps you belong to the IGM group (I Got Mine). People who took from this social contract but then when it became time for them to share their responsibilities say no. Somehow I doubt you didn't partake of the social contract to your benefit but don't want to pay the bill (taxes) for your part of the deal.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 22 2018, @07:21PM (6 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 22 2018, @07:33PM (5 children)
So somehow it is an ad hominem attack when you said you never signed a contract? I was pointing out the fallacy of your statement by showing that yes you did sign by accepting the "social contract" for your benefit. But you can always deflect instead of answer the statements.
Your argument is crap as you took the goods but never made payment in kind. That is why it is a social contract. Everyone gets benefits from certain pieces of the contract and in return they need to pay back in when it becomes their turn. I know my family didn't have their house catch on fire but I understand how having a fire department to stop the spread of fire from one house to another is for the common good. Same for your education and your use of the roads and infrastructure. My taxes pay and paid into that for the common good. Like some people are fond of saying, "Don't like it? Go find another country that doesn't have these things." Perhaps the African warlords could use some more citizens.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 22 2018, @07:51PM (4 children)
Nope.
No, you didn't. You wrote:
Let's review the ways this is different:
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 22 2018, @08:20PM (3 children)
So you are confused?
You brought yourself into the discussion by saying you never signed a contract. (not an ad hominem if you are the subject of the discussion)
1) I never said you were uneducated. Try reading it again. I was pointing out that "I suppose" as the only out for not feeling the contract applies to you.
2) I said you belong to the IGM because you "got yours" and now don't want to continue your part of the social contract. Your push back against the social contract being the basis for this thinking.
3) I never said you didn't give back. You said that the social contract is the government forcing you to do something you don't want to through taxes. Your push back meaning you don't want to contribute to continuing the common good.
4) I never said you had to match it. I am saying that we all pay into the common good pot for things we need directly and things we don't need also. We all chip in to get a better result for the whole (not the parts).
But if you would like to continue deflecting away from the question of why you think it is OK to get the benefit of the social contract without making the payments back into said social contract, I am all ears.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 22 2018, @08:44PM (2 children)
What is there to be confused about? No, I'm not confused.
An argument is not merely getting the subject right.
Fine. You merely "wondered" (that is, heavily insinuated it). I see we're into semantics games. As to the second sentence, no one has in this entire discussion (65 comments as of the time of this post) used the phrase "I suppose" prior to your fake quote above.
Yes, and I noted that was an unfounded claim. Your next claim is:
Let's review:
Your words say otherwise. Moving on:
No, you said:
While your backtracking is welcome (the original statement was deeply in error), it still leaves the weaselly outcome that chipping in a lot of money for things one finds abhorrent and destructive, like say, a $400 billion fighter jet or a several trillion dollar war, is somehow part of the common good.
What question? Let's look at the past few AC posts for such "questions":
So just a couple of leading questions, both which I answered BTW. This wasn't deflected because this wasn't asked.
But let's suppose hypothetically that you were to ask a question like:
And I would answer, no, I don't think it would be ok. But instead we have this primitive thinking that one provides something that's not very valuable nor given with regard for the interests or consent of other parties who hypothetically benefit, and then expects to be paid well for it!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 22 2018, @09:01PM (1 child)
>>Do I think it is OK to get benefits from society without compensating those providing those benefits appropriately to the value I think I receive from the benefits?
"And I would answer, no, I don't think it would be ok." (I will discuss the rest of the statement later)
So then by that reasoning, Apple is in the wrong for using loopholes and special deals to get out of their responsibilities to the common good. This is not the values you have been espousing through this article's comments.
If Apple is getting the benefits (trained employees, roads, etc) but not paying back in kind for them, this is not ok (by your own statement in the rebuttal).
"But instead we have this primitive thinking that one provides something that's not very valuable nor given with regard for the interests or consent of other parties who hypothetically benefit, and then expects to be paid
well for it!"
I am not sure what you are saying here. I am not sure what this "something" provided and being paid for is in your statement. I am not sure how "primitive thinking" fits into this discussion. Who decides the value? The parents of the child being educated, or the single man with no children, or the society who wants to have productive citizens (ad infinitum)? What is hypothetical benefit of education of the children (just one example)? I don't know what you mean by expects to be paid well for it. Once again this whole part of the response is confusing.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 22 2018, @09:54PM
Notice my phrase "appropriate to the value I think I receive". Why shouldn't Apple use those "loopholes and special deals" to get out of costs that aren't appropriate to the benefits they receive? The number one way I can tell people are bullshitting on this issue, is that they can't describe the value of "social contracts" or even what a social contract is supposed to be. They can't describe "responsibilities". They can't describe "common good". These are just trite, stock phrases they use to rationalize taking what they want. It's such an infantile way to view the world.
"IF". zocalo already noted [soylentnews.org], for example, that 60% of the UK's budget is for items that are irrelevant to Apple (having nothing to do with trained employees, roads, etc). In that light, 9.5% in taxes is 40% of 23.3% in taxes. Sounds to me like every business should be paying those lower taxes for the little they actually consume.
The dirty secret here is that businesses don't use that much in the way of infrastructure or programs for what they do. Apple doesn't need a pension, health care, or welfare (which is 60% of the UK budget). Individual people do.
Every time you mangled one of my posts to make an ad hominem attack, that's primitive thinking. Every time you speak of Apple's responsibilities without even the slightest understanding of who is actually creating the costs nor presenting even the slightest reasoning in support of why Apple should have those responsibilities, you're engaging in primitive thinking. Or speaking of the cost of "trained employees, roads" while ignoring that there's at least an order of magnitude more public spending than that. Or why there are publicly funded benefits for people and businesses who can readily provide those benefits to themselves without inflicting the costs on the public - primitive thinking.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 22 2018, @06:49PM (1 child)
I guess you pumped your fist after writing that drivel.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 22 2018, @07:21PM
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 22 2018, @06:56PM (5 children)
Point of interest, in your metaphor YOU are the tapeworm trying to feed off the larger body.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 22 2018, @07:22PM (4 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 22 2018, @08:51PM (3 children)
Why would I bother to follow a link to more of your stupidity? Your stance is inherently flawed, that you are unable to comprehend that only illustrates your ignorance and selfishness.
To quote your role model, you "fail bigly."
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 22 2018, @09:57PM (2 children)
Because you obviously have nothing better to do with your time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 23 2018, @08:09PM (1 child)
@khallow As the AC who first mentioned the "social contract", I obviously do not agree with many of your views, but I do appreciate your persistence in expressing them. Nearly 20% of the posts in this thread come from you.
As the saying goes: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
[shakes hands]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 23 2018, @09:00PM
I'll finish by summarizing what really angers me about this "social contract". First, as I mentioned, it's not really a contract nor is it usually invoked as such, but rather to excuse coercion. Any real contract would have provisions for a) honoring promises made in good faith and rejecting those made in bad faith, b) protecting the future of society, particularly of future generations, and c) apply equally to all, not just marginalized protesters who have good reason to dislike what's going on.
Second, it's commonly invoked to excuse tax collection for venal or short-sighted reasons. Sure, it's nice that older generations voted themselves a hefty pension and health services at the expense of younger generations (a near universal phenomenon in the developed world). But that dishonesty should be rewarded with a severe cutback to the benefits, not disruption of young peoples' lives and the decay of the society. Similarly, we're seeing most countries shifting to debt loads that are at least as large as their GDP (a crude measure of the size of the economy), again a glaring sign that the electorate isn't thinking about the future.
Third, it's telling that most advocates of the social contract can only point to simple things like roads or police as benefits of social contracts while the actual expenditures cover far more. If you can only point to 5-10% of government expenditure as a benefit (usually with a horrid inefficiency in benefit for the cost), then that's a strong sign to me that the government in question should be radically shrunk, perhaps as part of said social contract. Yet somehow the social contract is that we should pay our taxes, not that we should fight hard to reduce the government burden on our lives.