> They don’t “profit from your country” - they have users who live in your country.
Which they make money from -- in fact quite a few companies make more money from a given Australian than other markets[1] meaning that they are profiting more off Australians (even for online services -- like Adobe that charged AU$1400 more for their software in Australia).
If a company wishes to sell books in Australia, they have to pay Australian taxes. But if you sell online services, all of a sudden everyone starts talking about the destruction of a free and open internet. If a company selling a service is willing and has the ability to "destroy the free and open internet" through IP blocks if they are asked to pay taxes for the money they make off foreign markets, then ask yourself -- how free is the internet in the first place if that is all it takes to destroy it?
You don't pay taxes if you don't make money. I don't understand what you're trying to argue against here.
> but it’s crazy to say that you should have to pay taxes to a foreign government just because someone under that government uses your website.
It's not about usage, it's about profit. If you're making a profit by providing services to people in a foreign market, you have now made money in a way where society requires that you pay taxes on your profit. Most countries have bilateral tax agreements to avoid double taxation, so if a company pays tax in $countryA they only have to pay the excess in $countryB. Those agreements exist explicitly to facilitate the ability to do business overseas.
Not to mention that many of these companies are incorporated in foreign countries as well, which means that they aren't even foreign entities at that point. They're just ordinary Australian companies that don't pay tax.
> In the long run, if this rhetoric you’re advocating is successful (that if you touch anything somehow related to a government over the internet then you owe them a cut and have to follow their local rules), you can say goodbye to the open, global internet.
I hate to break it to you, but you already have to follow the law of countries that you do business with. If you host certain kinds of hate speech, you are not permitted to provide access to said hate speech in Germany (even if legal in your country). If you host certain kinds of pornography, you are not permitted to provide access to said pornography in other countries (even if legal in your country). And so on. Will you be extradited for breaking those laws? Maybe not, but that doesn't make it any less illegal.
I understand the whole "anti-regulation" view that some US folks have (and I agree that many laws regarding the internet are very troubling), but pretending as though companies should be allowed to make money in a foreign market without paying tax just because their company happens to involve the internet is pretty odd to me.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_Tax