I rarely google to find a serious publication. Perhaps it would be a good thing if Google stops indexing news sites.
This decision is crony capitalism at its worst.
(1) They had teams of people producing regular fresh content, to a high quality.
(2) They had existing subscriber bases, which could have been converted to other purposes (consider the online dating services offered by some of the UK newspapers.)
(3) They had existing economies of scale from business lines which were not dependent on the internet, buffering them against dot com downturns and the like.
(4) Several of them had other divisions producing other good content. e.g. motion picture rights.
(5) They had international presence, and internal connectivity.
(6) Many had existing consumer-connectivity through cable relationships.
Yet. None created geek-friendly workplaces, they were too tied to their cash cows, and they have done badly.
Google&friends are not making money and competing "like any other business".
I don't understand this. Can you explain, please?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_erosion_and_profit_shifti...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Sandwich
Take the billions of dollars that you've saved from BEPS and use it to subsidize your local products, or run ads attacking the competition, or taking them to court, or hire salespeople, or build new content. Simple.
This is not specific to big tech though, it's a single point of failure of having a centralised government that is easily corrupted by rich corporations.
That's plain wrong. Every company only pays income tax in its country of residence. The only difference is that there might be a sales tax for physical goods.
That is not correct. Taxes are payable wherever the profits are made.
It is usually the case that the country where the company is headquartered will have a far greater proportion of profits compared to revenue because a lot of the things that add value happen there, but in the case of large tech companies, this is taken to the extreme, where not just profits, but even revenue itself is shifted from where the business actually happens.
For example, Google reported £1.6bn (US$2.1bn) in revenue and paid £44m ($58m) in corporation taxes (on profits of £231m ($303m) based on a 19% tax rate) in the UK for the 2019-20 financial year, but its actual UK revenue is estimated to be around £5.7b ($7.5b) for the same period.[1]
Whereas car companies have consumers as their customers and have to pay sales tax, AdWords expenditure by businesses is considered a business expense and is not taxed (in the UK). If they played by the same rules, they would have paid around £1.14b ($1.5b; based on 20% VAT) in tax in 2019-20, instead of £44m.
1. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/07/google-uk...
No, with regard to income tax that's simply wrong.
That said, public companies typically have subsidiaries in other countries and these subsidiaries have to pay corporate income tax in their country of residence (but also regardless of where the profits are actually made). This is often used to avoid (or delay) tax payments, especially if the subsidiaries are in low-tax countries.
But if the parent company Apple Inc. sold an iPhone in Germany, they wouldn't have to pay income tax in Germany, just like BMW AG doesn't have to pay income tax in the US.
This is not true for the media. A functioning, critical, and trustworthy media is very important to society.
Profit ≈ importance is just flat out wrong in general.
(Not saying I agree with this govt intervention)
Even the "fair and unbiased" govt funded ABC is a total toothless joke.
> Even the "fair and unbiased" govt funded ABC is a total toothless joke.
> https://youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=HtV-2X4BjQI
I don't know much about the Australian media, but I do know a citation to a random youtube comedian does not convincingly support such a statement.
Australia's problem is that our news orgs are corrupt to the core, every journo is afraid to go against Murdoch in any way shape or form their careers are ended if they do.
So here we are, with this "comedian," doing a better reporting job than pretty much every single outlet in the country. With very few exceptions.
Climate change protests https://youtube.com/watch?v=HTAzb7UbJ6M
Darling river fuck up https://youtube.com/watch?v=gNbSazIqVYA
Fatty mc fuck face https://youtu.be/WmJ7CSRRCDM
Misinformed journalism https://youtube.com/watch?v=3tTqyZQsG5A