How can countries avoid the spiral of death with taxing? I hate how google, facebook etc. makes hundreds of millions in my country, but barely pay taxes. While local companies do.
Figuring out how much a large company makes is complex, which is why we have a very complex system of rules and laws to let us calculate it. And according to those laws, Google, Facebook, etc. don't actually make hundreds of millions in profit in your country.
That's why they don't pay taxes, and it's what the linked article is about: Because your country (and mine) has passed laws which say that they aren't making money despite what your intuition tells you.
If you want to fix it, the starting point would be those laws. Except...we've been trying to improve those laws for a long, long time. Many are now many decades old. Transfer pricing rules exist for a reason; simply abolishing them would cause other problems and greater imbalances.
At some point maybe we need to step back and focus on taxing the consumption of real people (which is, in comparison, much easier). Facebook may be inherently hard to tax; but those profits flow into the pockets of real people, and they are (in comparison!) easy to tax.
The basic problem is companies using public resources of a country but not paying back into the system.
If you're talking not so much about them using actual resources, but benefiting in some vague sense from a country having a functioning police system, even if they don't actually use it, then no, you can't charge them fees. But if they're making sales in your country, you can charge GST/VAT.
But if they're not using actual resources, not making sales in your country, and not making profits...
...then they're not going to be paying back into the system. Even if you really need them too, even if it would be highly immoral for them not to. The existence of a problem doesn't imply the existence of a solution.
If you're unhappy with the implementation of a specific program, like Medicare (which is, of course, more efficient than private health insurance in the US), let's talk about that.
My pick is the military--very wasteful. We could fold 90% of that budget into university and health care and live in heaven on earth.
Our current gov't system provide very little incentive for efficient use of funds.
I'm not arguing that all of these programs need to just disappear. I'm arguing a "race to the bottom" in terms of efficiency is a good thing, not a bad thing for gov'ts.
Having seen what races to the bottom do in various other industries, I shudder to think of how government works would suffer under the same pressure. Not the kind of society I'd want to aspire to live in.
Ireland is 5m people. Just hang them out to dry. Either they consume as much as they add in value or their standard of living has to drop until this is held to be correct.
May be American politicians should stop the war on drugs, wars in far off countries and medicare and reduce tax levels to 20%.
Facebook, Google, Apple and push the frontiers of human knowledge at rapid rate if they can spend that money themselves. In case of government it will be used to by some junk airforce planes that dont fly.
It's a 401k in the US. It's a tax deferment, not a tax break. If your effective rate went from 35% to 25% due to your 401k contribution, you still end up paying 35%, just not right now.
But if you put a lot in, the fact you HAVE to start taking money out at a certain again AND it all gets taxed before you die means you pretty much end up paying the taxes anyways (or more if rates have gone up).
A lot of them even have no idea that they will be taxed anyways when they withdraw.
No one earns anything in a vacuum. Money doesn't exist without society. Taxes reflect that.
I live in France, my employer pays my raw salary in taxes, and approximately 30% of this raw salary that I get is paid in taxes too. And I am happy to pay those because it contributes to a system that gives me and everyone free healthcare, unemployment benefits if needed as well as many other things. If you're unhappy with the 40% you pay to your government, ask to fix inefficiencies, not to stop paying them.
Lol. Most real frontier level r and d is funded by the gov with tax money, especially the not for profit r and d focused on energy and health sectors. The only r and d the tech cos you named do is targeted to make profit for themselves which is why they pay taxes. I agree that a lot of tax money is wasted but some of it is used for critical research.
When facebook starts a non profit division researching better nuclear storage containers and cancer treatments then, maybe that division shouldnt be taxed. I mean these are essentially advertising based businesses, so that's not really pushing the frontiers of human knowledge in a uniformly positive direction.