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Comment by esperent | Hacker News Reader

> How do you tariff Adsense from google

Well, it's already subject to VAT, so I guess in much the same way as that?

I guess it just seems a bit pointless to attempt to tariff what is essentialy a monopoly. Google could pretty easily just pass on 100% of the costs of the tarrifs onto the consumer.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love it if more American big corpos paid more taxes, I was just curious what this plan would even look like when/if it's enacted

Passing the cost onto the consumer is what makes the business look less appealing compared to local alternatives, helping to break the monopoly.

VAT means taxes the EU consumers prices, not on Google's profits.

From a quick search I cannot find any examples of tariffs applied as a tax on a specific company's profits.

They are commonly applied as a surcharge (charge on top of the business or consumer price of a good) on specific goods, which is exactly how VAT works across the EU.

Tariffs can be applied in other ways too, such as a surtax (tax on top of another tax). But I don't think tax on profits is common, as that would give the foreign company too much leeway to fudge the numbers.

True, but it's collected by Google and passed to the relevant government. So it would be similar (they just wouldn't add it to the price, as VAT is).

> it's collected by Google

Not the case in at least some EU countries. Businesses are responsible for calculating the VAT and paying it themselves.

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