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Comment by thrw42A8N | Hacker News Reader

> They paid 18% less tax in 2016 than in 2013 while the number of flats available on the site went from 30k to 300k

Completely meaningless without also saying what their costs and investments were.

Well no that's not really what happens, what happens is that legally the french entity is just a service provider for the irish HQ. They pretend it's a simple marketing agency and that the real value is provided by the irish entity

Doesn't matter - you can't make any judgement without knowing these numbers. They may have actually paid a higher tax rate than previously - we don't know.

Funny how it works, they lose money everywhere but one of the smallest country they operate in banks 50% of their worldwide revenues, it probably is just a coincidence that this is a tax heaven... we just don't know I guess

The French branch made 160k of profit while the Irish branch made more than all the other EU countries combined

FYI: france is the second market for airbnb after the US... do you really think they would even bother if they did make 160k there when they make 300m+ per year globally ? Do you really think their second market nets them < 0.1% of their total net income ? Do you really think the most touristic country in the world in absolute numbers brings 160k euros per year to airbnb ?

I dont't know much but I'm not a fool

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tourism_rankings

https://www.searchlogistics.com/learn/statistics/airbnb-stat...

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2023/1127/1418779-revenues-...

https://www.breakingnews.ie/business/airbnb-ireland-records-...

I don't know why you're telling me this, I know it - and it's not relevant at all without knowing the numbers.

I guess it's just a crazy coincidence that most huge multinational corporations base their European operations in Ireland then? They just like drinking Guinness I suppose?

You're preaching to the choir.

Well you said it doesn't matter because we don't know the numbers, yet the numbers we do know about don't match any scenario that doesn't involve large scale tax """optimisation"""

Accusations like this have to be founded on serious grounds, otherwise you make the whole argument appear foolish.

My dude... they literally are in court right now over these things... it's a known thing for years now, apple just got fined by the EU for the same shenanigans. It really isn't a conspiracy or a secret, everybody knows it, they just use the very convoluted EU laws and systems to get away with it but the door is slowly closing

Ok, great - then we can wait for the result of the court case instead of throwing around random meaningless but outrageous numbers.

At some point governments will catch up and start taxing based on percentage of global revenue or even turnover.

I hope so. And that's not only USA-copanies phenomenon. I worked for a french company in Montreal which payed close to zero tax amount even though they are doing more than OK financially world-wide, including Canada.

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