They are also scrupulous tax avoiders in the UK. Pay your fair fucking share.
Not to complain about individual actors following the schemes that you set up.
Why do you feel Airbnb should voluntarily donate money to the government beyond what they are legally required? How much should they donate? Will all other companies be required to provide this donation, or just the high profile ones that upset you?
Companies don't HAVE to create a double Irish dutch sandwich, creating webs of companies that loan IP to each other and other such nonsense. They make a choice to do this. This isn't about them overpaying or "donating". This is about them doing the right thing.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/nov/28/netflix-to-sta...
They can do the right thing. They just choose not to.
I don't view countries as representations of righteous morality, I view them as market participants, no different than you or I or a corporation or a financial institution is a market participant. Speculators with legitimate reasons to stuff their coffers.
There are many people and organizations like me, and make no mistake, the other countries around a country thinks the exact same way.
When a country cannot reach consensus on how to tax, that is a prison of their own creation. When a coalition of countries cannot reach consensus on how to curb behaviors they don't like, that is also a prison of their own creation.
They are in competition with each other.
Some of us are playing by a set of rules that recognizes that, it is also a more effective set of rules.
It is much easier for a company run by its founders to act morally. Airbnb does not, which to me is not the end of the world, but worth pointing out in thread about how great those founders supposedly are.
Suggesting that it is just the state's fault is a naive view.
The obvious answer that you haven't accepted is that, in this conversation, you are a diver surrounded by amoral sharks.
We all view and see the gradient of relativity and are not swayed by your arguments. The consequences guide the actions, and a municipality's hotel tax or zoning laws are the toothless kinds of laws, so toothless that it isn't even worth bothering to change them. Did you see how gig apps lobbied with push notifications against California laws and referendums and court rulings? Because of the consequences.
The Irish Dutch sandwich would cease to exist if governments wanted to stop it. It’s the responsibility of the people to vote for politicians who aren’t corrupt and will make laws to properly represent our intentions instead of enriching their buddies.
It’s not the companies fault, they are simply following the incentives. All companies have competitors, and if you design a loophole, the nature of competition will force all companies to follow it. Lest your competitor gain a profitable advantage.
Fix the game and players will follow the new rules overnight.
Buddies like... the companies that use those loopholes.
> if you design a loophole, the nature of competition will force all companies to follow it
Does it also force them to lobby to keep that loophole?
> Lest your competitor gain a profitable advantage.
Is the differential value of Airbnb using tax loopholes? Do you mean to say that if Airbnb stops using tax schemes, a competitor will pop up and be in an advantage?
> Fix the game and players will follow the new rules overnight.
Players will complain and try to lobby and even blackmail governments trying to fix the game, and will also actively try to find new loopholes.
Really, we need to hold companies accountable for these schemes. It's very hypocritical to praise the grit and the motivation of the founders but consider the company an abstract and amoral entity whenever it comes to things like paying taxes. Stop excusing bad behavior.
So effectively, by not caring enough to close these loopholes, the people have sanctioned this behavior as okay.
You personally may disagree with it, but apparently a majority of your countrymen do not see it as a big problem. Otherwise it would already be solved.
Complicated tax laws beget complicated tax dodges. At this point no one in the UK or US or many other countries is able to answer a simple question like "Has this company paid the amount of tax we intended?" It's all gray areas, and it's all your fault, not the foreign companies'.