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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

An agreement can be reached without a treaty. But that's not even super relevant here.

The US doesn't need to change any laws to meet this agreement. We already tax our corporations more than 15%. What the US wants is for other countries to tax that much, to discourage our own multinationals from booking revenue outside the US to avoid US tax. The EU wants companies to book revenue where they make it, which they can do all on their own. They don't need the US for that.

And what makes you think the GOP wouldn't support this? It would give them cover to lower the tax rate to 15% from 21% to "be in line with the rest of the G7". Also, if our multinationals can't avoid tax anymore, there is a good chance they would just book their revenue here in the US, leading to more revenue for the US and less for Europe.

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The agreement changes the way a company revenue is recognized and allocated between jurisdictions. I suspect it may require to change the tax treaties between those countries. It's not just changing the corporate tax rate.

From what I can tell with what's out there on there internet, the main change is allowing local jurisdictions to tax a company on the money they make in that country, even if they have no presence there.

So again, it would just increase revenue for the US, and I see no reason they wouldn't agree to it.

At the end of the day, I don't think the US had to compromise here. I think it's universally better for the US government, just not US based companies, but it gives the GOP enough air cover to agree to it anyway.

It mostly benefits the European countries that are missing their tax revenue.

It will also massively increase the complexity of doing taxes for smaller businesses. It wouldn't surprise me if it lead to even more websites going "sorry, we value customers from your country, but we cannot serve this content to you".

Imagine running a small business and somebody from Algeria wishes to purchase your software. Is the $5 you make worth having to file Algerian taxes?

I mention this, because this is something that happened with YouTube this month. Content creators have to give their tax info to YouTube because the US is now charging taxes from creators outside the US on money they made on US customers.

Edit: as was pointed out - there's a minimum $10 million threshold. That makes it far more reasonable.

Part of the agreement is that you have to have $10M in profit in that country before the rules apply.

So that would never happen. You’d have to make a ton of money there before you have to file taxes. And it’ll be worth it by then.

Ah, I missed that part. You're right in that case! I'm just so used to the EU coming up with new rules without reasonable exemptions that I assumed the same here.

It's my mistake!

> you have to have $10M in profit

Sorry, I missed where this was mentioned in the article. Can you supply a link to the reference if it is not in the article?

I did see the following quote:

> The rules on making multinationals pay taxes where they operate - known as "pillar one" of the agreement - would apply to global companies with at least a 10% profit margin.

which is not equivalent to your comment.

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