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Comment by skafjvhs | Hacker News Reader

Something about this story seems off to me.

>Mr Kern, who heads Austria's Social Democrats and the country's coalition government, also said Facebook and Google had sales of more than 100m euros each in Austria.

I'm not an expert on Austria but this suggests to me that this person can propose and possibly pass laws in Austria. He is not just an activist who only has the power to give interviews to BBC. If he thinks that Amazon and Starbucks are not paying enough tax to Austria, why doesn't he change Austrian law to charge them more tax? Don't give me some bullshit about how corporate lawyers will find loopholes - you run the government! Do your job! Change the law! Or at least make a show of trying.

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Kern only came into power in May, the social-democrats (SPÖ) have been in a "great coalition" with christian-democrats (ÖVP) since 2007. This coalition has been on rickety legs for many years now and there's not much the two parties agree on. There have been no noteworthy reforms for a decade.

There's also the threat of the populist far-right FPÖ, which has been gaining power again after two failed coalitions with the ÖVP 15 years ago (The FPÖ have been polling at ~30% for several months now, which is the largest approval of all parties).

Several members of the ÖVP-government and regional bodies are actively working against the great coalition and undermining the head of the ÖVP, sympathising with going back in a coalition with the fascists.

For all these reasons, Bundeskanzler Kern is not as powerful in legislature as would be desireable. Also I understand his remark as suggestion for a discussion and possibly a proposal for an EU-wide discussion on unifying tax laws. And he's probably fishing for votes with public statements on popular topics.

Personally I think he's the most promising Bundeskanzler we had in a long time, as he's an intellectual and is charismatic enough to potentially neutralize the threat of a far-right government.

Thanks for the context, it's very useful.

From a US perspective, it's common for our top politicians, when talking about a problem, to present a specific proposal for legislation they would use to fix the problem. It makes their words more credible to me. It is easy to complain that things are bad, harder to describe in detail how things could be better. To be cynical, these plans are written by staffers and the politician may just memorize the key points. But it at least demonstrates there is some commitment to the issue.

> If he thinks that Amazon and Starbucks are not paying enough tax to Austria, why doesn't he change Austrian law to charge them more tax?

Because Austria is a member of the EU and businesses in the EU but outside of Austria can operate there while paying taxes from their profits to their "home" country (VAT must be paid in Austria).

Now this is all good if the system wasn't so easy to exploit. Typical arrangements (like "double irish" or "dutch sandwich") have four, five or more subsidiaries in different legislations, each with their own locally negotiated tax breaks, doing complicated loan arrangements and IP licensing schemes that result in effectively zero tax (or a flat fee) and all the profits esacpe to Bermuda and Caymans.

There seems to be an Europe-wide crackdown on practices like this, and the Apple decision from earlier this week is just the beginning.

I'm really glad that this exploitative practice is (hopefully) coming to an end and the multinationals start paying their fair share.

So the EU will not allow Austria to pass, for example, a tax on internet advertising in Austria (in the article the Chancellor complains that Facebook and Google don't pay advertising duty in Austria)?

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