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Reuters reports that plans for a major rewriting of international tax rules have been unveiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that could eliminate structures that have allowed companies like Google and Amazon to shave billions of dollars off their tax bills. For more than 50 years, the OECD’s work on international taxation has been focused on ensuring companies are not taxed twice on the same profits hampering trade and limit global growth. But companies have been using such treaties to ensure profits are not taxed anywhere. A Reuters investigation last year found that three quarters of the 50 biggest U.S. technology companies channelled revenues from European sales into low tax jurisdictions like Ireland and Switzerland, rather than reporting them nationally. For example, search giant Google takes advantage of tax treaties to channel more than $8 billion in untaxed profits out of Europe and Asia each year and into a subsidiary that is tax resident in Bermuda, which has no income tax. “We are putting an end to double non-taxation,” says OECD head of tax Pascal Saint-Amans.
For the recommendations to actually become binding countries will have to encode them in their domestic laws or amend their bilateral tax treaties. The OECD says that it plans to hold an international conference on amending the network of existing tax treaties. Sol Picciotto, an emeritus professor at Lancaster University in Britain, says the recommendations are at least five to 10 years from becoming law, and that the jury is still out on whether they will accomplish their stated goals. “These are just tweaks,” says Picciotto. “They’re trying to repair an old motorcar, but what they need is a new engine.”
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday September 17 2014, @11:38AM
I feel the same way every time I pay property tax for the right to tell most people to "get off my lawn" , however other people somehow have wrangled the right to tell me what I can and cannot do without also paying the government for that right. Why is my house considered property and taxable, but someone else's imaginary property defended by my government as if it were real, yet not taxed? If it were taxed, it would encourage productive assets to be maintained, and also encourage abandoned stuff to be ... well ... abandoned.
When we keep all sorts of stuff only so someone else can't use it, we know that as "hoarding", and is usually frowned upon.... unless its imaginary property.
It seems we are playing in a field where it costs very little to go around and claim rights to doing stuff, only to make money by keeping anyone else from doing it. Then we bitch about it because another sovereign country starts production and we can't do a thing about it - all our politicians could do is keep anyone from making it here - in the land of "free enterprise"...
I am a strong believer that I can feed a man for a day by giving him a fish, however teaching one to fish will feed him for the rest of his life... I do not need my government not only taxing me, but using those tax dollars to make "NO FISHING" signs. Such activity to me is just an indication we have way too many overfed politicians who have no connection whatsoever to the real world.
I am sick of watching our nation slide deeper and deeper into the financial hole while we finance our legal masturbation with debt instruments.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Thursday September 18 2014, @06:38PM
Not like they'll ever get taxed for the millions of copies that they claim belong to them and are merely licensed to the buyers :).
Your nation won't slide faster than average by virtue of the petrodollar. Everyone else (including Japan, China) with positive amounts of US dollars gets poorer (taxed) every time the USA creates US dollars (whether by loaning from left hand to right hand or future to present etc especially at below market rates). And when finance people worldwide get nervous or even panic they like to move to US dollars and call it a "flight to safety" or similar...