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Comment by the_svd_doctor | Hacker News Reader

But why? If you’re not physically present in the US and are not a US citizen, why would you be subject to (income) tax? Or is that not a form of income tax, but something else?

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>If you’re not physically present in the US and are not a US citizen, why would you be subject to (income) tax?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_withholding#International_...

Ha! Very interesting thanks.

California has similar laws. That if the work was done in California even if you live or are currently remote you owe California state income tax on those earnings.

I suppose a non-citizen subject to this tax would have to appeal to their own government and raise the issue diplomatically. But I doubt most nations would be in a position to change the United State's behavior in this regard. Maybe the EU has enough clout to contest this in a court of international law. But that also depends on them wanting to raise the issue in the first place.

EU is very much interested in collecting tax from tech giants.

We may simply impose tax on their global profits after some system of dividing them fairly.

Fair Taxation of the Digital Economy: https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/business/company-tax/f...

The EU is literally in the process of putting the same kind of taxes on technology companies. And people are cheering for it. The US does the same in reverse, everyone loses their minds...

I don't think it's the same. Huge corporations already shift their profits around to avoid taxes. This is only going to affect small businesses and independent creators that can't take advantage of the same corporate structure as a huge tech company.

Well the US has a lot of tax treaties. But not with all countries.

It is a form of income tax, yes. It's on top of sales taxes. And yes this means double taxation..

...like every other country out there that has both income tax and VAT/sales tax?

Double taxation usually means being taxed on the same amount by two foreign governments.

> But why?

How are they able to generate the income? Through the services YouTube provides from the US. How is YouTube able to provide those services? Because the US government creates infrastructure to enable it. How is that infrastructure paid for? Taxes. Hence they tax the income.

Ok, but that doesn’t answer the question at all. If I live in the EU and work for Google I don’t have to pay US income tax.

I’m not arguing for/against btw. Just asking about the technical reason.

If you live in the EU and work for Google, you probably actually work for Google's EU-based subsidiary. There's no US-based company involved in the relationship. It's confusing because the company treats all the subsidiaries as one whole, while the law treats the subsidiaries as their own entities.

AFAIK this misses the point. If a EU citizen is contracted by a US company, but living in the EU they are not subject to US income tax at all, but only to their own state's - and also this might not be legal if the US corp has a EU subsidiary. (If they live in the US they are taxed by the US first and their home country second, but taxes paid in the US are being deducted from the taxes they have to pay in their home country. And, if they are contracted with a EU based subsidiary then they are taxed in the EU only, obviously.)

> If they live in the US they are taxed by the US first and their home country second

That's not universally true. My home country doesn't require any income taxes from me since I neither work nor live there. AFAIK the US is quite unique in that regard that they require their citizens to pay taxes no matter where they are working or living.

> the government creates infrastructure to enable it.

Hearty laugh.

Yes, to a degree, but at the current time (and for a good long time) the US government does not even pretend to try. Tell me a significant infrastructure package since the interstates.

Many relevant infrastructure are created by telecom companies, should we owe taxes to those too?

> Many relevant infrastructure are created by telecom companies, should we owe taxes to those too?

They don’t have tax raising powers so they can’t. The US does so it can.

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