Tech Giants Face Hundreds of Millions in New Taxes in Europe | Hacker News Reader

Tech Giants Face Hundreds of Millions in New Taxes in Europe

wsj.com

22 pointsthisisit13 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16609116

I really don't understand why corporations are taxed on profit. It produces weird effects such as where a company is better off paying interest on debt rather than dividends on stock.

Having the tax be payable on revenue of a corporation in that jurisdiction rather than profit would be simpler to understand, easier to administrate and avoid the current tax avoidance we have have.

Example: My company makes 100M in revenue. To sell my goods, my cost is 99M, I only have 1M in profit. If I were taxed on my 100M revenue, I would just lose money and my business would have no point and I would have to close even though I am profitable. If it costs me 99M to sell 100M worth of goods, why wouldn't I be taxed on the 1M?

Why should two companies who have 100M in revenue at 99M costs vs 15M costs to pay the same taxes?

A reason to not take on your profit is that your "cost of sales" can be a pretty nebulous concept. How much of your 99M costs is licensing to entities you control in other jurisdictions?

I understand why it is fairer have it be profit, but profit in the modern accounting world seems to be a strange thing. A good accountant can make your profit be anything you like, so it doesn't make sense to tax based on the idea that company has bad accountants. Generally it is harder for accountants to change revenue figures (other than defer into different years).

The rules lawyering as to what is a legitimate cost is huge.

Profit margin varies across industries and individual companies, so you would be collecting less tax revenue on the most profitable companies.

Essentially it’s like setting a sales tax on the products, then giving the company zero income tax. Doesn’t usually sit right with most people.

A business expense is eventually someone else's profit. In the terminal sense some one will take it out as personal income, and it will be taxed at a higher rate.

Then there are things like sales tax, tariffs, VAT, tangible property taxes which all are accounted for. So every bit if businesses revenue is taxed somehow.

VAT taxes revenues (more or less anyway).

Income taxes on profits are in addition to that.

Or just abolish the corporate tax altogether. The profit is already taxed once the gains hit individuals in the form of dividends or capital gains.

[edit] here is a nice article outlining the argument: https://www.nationalreview.com/2014/09/abolish-corporate-tax...

Amazing how any Europeans bend over backwards for these companies and the USA. What reason is there to oppose taxing what Faceboook generates off of European users? Are they still under the delusion that Apple and co. isn't bringing all those billions back stateside to enrich Wall Street? A continent with no backbone!

> companies whose annual global revenue exceeds €750 million ($918 million). The tax would apply to services where users play an important role in creating value, such as selling online ad space, social media or platform services for ride hailing or food delivery.

So it's basically a tax on EU punching bags, got it.

no, it's a tax on companies who move their profits to low-tax nations

Large multinational tech corporations with large presences in the EU, yet which pay little to no taxes in the EU, also happen to be the EU's "punching bags". Funny how policy and reality line up sometimes.

To be honest I’ve never bought into the idea of taxing companies where the idea/IP was created, it seems weird and designed by lobbyists to make taking tax revenue difficult.

These companies have played the game in terms of exploiting loopholes; I think they deserve everything they get.

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