I don't understand why the US just doesn't make these companies pay the tax instead of trying to get some global minimum tax agreement.
If Uber wants to operate in the US. Force them to pay otherwise ban them from operating in the US. Done.
If Uber wants to operate in the US. Force them to pay otherwise ban them from operating in the US. Done.
AFAIK, most countries like the US go for a tax on profits, but profits of a multinational country are extremely hard to "locate", as in: in which country was the profit made?
Some obvious examples are IKEA stores licensing the rights to the IKEA brand from some company in the Netherlands, which means most stores in the US almost have no profits. Or starbucks USA buying extremely expensive (but high quality they say) beans from a company in Switserland... which is also part of the multi-national Starbucks holding.
These are obvious examples, but it is almost inherently hard to define where profits are made for a multi-national company as they almost always have revenue streams going in many directions and who says which national company is really adding value while others are almost profitless?
Otoh a revenue based system would also be rather hard to manage, especially if you want to prevent double taxation (both countries in the equation taxing the same revenue) as that almost requires profit based taxation again.
- tax sales in the country where things are sold, this is the price of access to that market.
- tax distribution of income and profits to shareholders and staff where they work and live, that's the price of access to the society they live and work in.
- tax distribution of the gains of selling shareholdings where the beneficiaries of these live and work.
- if people spend in a country different from where their earnings are taxed, the sales tax will still get them.
The above is actually how the vast majority of tax is collected anyway, it doesn't really matter if a company paid 0% corporation tax on profits when they generated much more sales and income tax than any tax on their profits will ever be. It just doesn't make great rage inducing headlines and soundbites for politicians. I think the best political strategy would be restructure corporation tax to simply be a component of the above sales and income taxes
It's easier to workaround that endless fight by ensuring that it doesn't matter where tax is paid.