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Comment by TazeTSchnitzel | Hacker News Reader

VAT evasion is not something you'd expect a large company to get in trouble for. Either the government is wrong or Meta really messed up?

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You phrased that nicely. :)

Large companies indeed usually don't get in trouble for tax evasion, but they are certainly the ones more often committing it. They don't call it "evasion", of course, but more like "tax minimization", or "using every legal loophole possible known to our army of lawyers".

The only thing Meta messed up is maybe not being up-to-date with some obscure legal gotcha in Italy, and even so, the fine will just be the cost of doing business.

> The only thing Meta messed up is maybe not being up-to-date with some obscure legal gotcha in Italy

Or there's some intentional vague wording so that some politician can get "a big win" and their polls up by going after an unpopular "evil foreign tech giant".

If you can't innovate, regulate!

Well, they are good at tax avoidance, but tax evasion is not something they are usually up to.

EU countries bicker about VAT like schoolchildren. When Italy says VAT is due it might mean FB has been negligent, but it probably means FB made a deal with another EU country (Ireland perhaps) and paid a lower amount of VAT over there.

That's not how VAT works… the customer's local VAT rate is the one that is used, not the merchant's.

No, the EU has astonishingly childish VAT rules that specify which country is owed VAT at which rate for all sorts of edge cases, like an online purchase made from a train heading across a border. The vendor, the customer, and the train can represent up to four different countries, each of which can argue they are owed VAT.

There are some exceptions but they're slowly being removed, and I don't think they would cover Meta whose business is entirely digital services?

If you have a $100 debt with the bank, you're in trouble.

If you have a $100M debt with the bank, the bank's in trouble.

s/bank/government/g

That's not at all the same thing. Banks loan you money with the expectation of return (interest). Governments build a country that is conducive to economic activity and take some of that economic activity in taxes to fund its activities.

In one situation a party has taken on risk for the expectation of future profit for itself. In the other a party has invested to stimulate activity beneficial to a larger group.

They might seem superficially similar but I don't think you can compare them that easily.

Banks can’t put you in jail.

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