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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: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Thursday March 22 2018, @10:52PM (4 children)
What's stupid about it? To the contrary, I believe competition in a capitalist system to be one of the more effective forms of cooperation. For example, consider the recent case of SpaceX. Back in 2011, it was decided by the US government to build a Saturn V-class rocket (lifting up to 130 metric tons to low Earth orbit (LEO)) and manned spacecraft, the Space Launch System [wikipedia.org]. The cost at the time was estimated to be $18 billion just through 2017. Superficially, this displays the advertised advantages of cooperation on a large scale - get together, decide what is the best approach, and fund it with the pooled resources of several hundred million people.
However, without any similar national-scale cooperative effort, SpaceX put together the Falcon Heavy, which can lift about almost half that maximum mass (64 metric tons for the completely disposable version, which has the highest possible payload) for a development cost of $0.5-1 billion. And if SpaceX can pull off its "BFR" rocket, it will kill the SLS by having a larger payload capacity at a much cheaper price - all without the cooperation that was supposed to be so valuable.
The problem is that cooperation here was weakened by several factors. First, the SLS is too big a project. They're spending $20 billion this decade on a project that should be costing a small fraction of that. Second, it has huge conflicts of interest. The governing parties are more interested in steering funding to contractors than in building a rocket and nobody involved cares about the question - where is the money going to come from for payloads using this rocket? Third, no one ever considered the possibility that the SLS might not be the best approach. Well, looks like it's far from best nowadays.
And that's where the competition approach works better. The competing teams are smaller and more focused. That means you're likely to both get more bang for the buck, and since one is far less invested in any of them, lose much less from the teams that don't make it. For example, NASA could probably fund a competition with ten Saturn V-class competitors for the cost of SLS to date, and throw away all but the best one, and still be ahead. If done right, they wouldn't even need to provide the investment. I'm sure there would be a fair number of viable competitors, if a $20 billion prize were dangled with no other funding.
Just put rules on the competition so it doesn't get out of hand. It's a solved problem. Even the people who don't want government involved at all, will have those rules.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 23 2018, @02:42AM (3 children)
Wow, what a wall o text. I didn't read anything except the "just put rules on the competition so it doesn't get out of hand". What do you think gov regulations are? What do you think social services are for??? They are there to prevent our animal nature from tearing down the very foundation upon which our society is built!!!
You sir are a fucking moron. Grow the fuck up.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 23 2018, @03:44AM (2 children)
You missed an opportunity to learn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 23 2018, @02:10PM (1 child)
Nope, I've seen enough of your explanations to get the gist. Competition can be good, but forming everything around it is so very flawed. No better than communists who think having a central beaurucracy control every detail is society is the best way to go. As always the best system is a mix of all, but obviously you drank the US capitalist koolaid. The really sad part is the success of capitalism and technology that you types like to flaunt as evidence of superiority might actually end up killing more humans than ever before. Ecological collapse is possible, then we'll be lucky to survive at all.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 23 2018, @04:33PM
That's fine. I didn't expect anything more than what you've written above.