Google 2.4% Rate Shows How $60 Billion Lost to Tax Loopholes

bloomberg.com

4 points·antr··6 comments

Such income shifting costs the U.S. government as much as $60 billion in annual revenue

No, it doesn't. The US gov't never had a claim to this money, so there's no way they can lose it.

Having a little trouble with language are you? The headline and the story dont support your interpretation. The story says that closing tax loopholes that allow separate allocation of expenses and revenue will gain the US up to $60B in revenues. A more sensible allocation is based on number of employees or revenues, or cost of production.

Apologies to those who dont like snide remarks, but I also dislike distortion to make a political point.

Of course a different tax law would have different tax revenues. But current tax law lays no claim to this money.

This is the correct answer. The Double Irish/Dutch Sandwich schemes are used to avoid foreign taxes. All that is required to avoid paying US federal tax is to avoid bringing the income into the country.

It'll be interesting to see how foreign laws (specifically, EU laws regarding privacy) affect taxes. Will future facebooks decide to not incorporate in the EU in order to avoid their (more) stringent privacy protection laws? If so, that could bring more revenue in to the U.S. treasury.

this shifts the tax burden to small and medium size companies that can't exploit these loopholes with the same ease as larger corporates. it looks like SMEs are the only companies helping to reduce the budget deficit. the system needs to change.

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