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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, @11:03PM
Well, let's look then. For example, of the 2015 US budget [nationalpriorities.org] of around $3.8 trillion, only $1.1 trillion is "discretionary" (the rest is interest payments and "mandatory" spending which is almost pure entitlement spending). That part contains funding for property law enforcement. So right there, we've shrunk the part of the pie that has that stuff into less than a third of the budget. From that same link, we see thin slivers for "Food and Agriculture", "Energy and Environment", and "Government" which contain most business regulation, something like $120-130 billion in total. That's 3-4% of the pie.