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Comment by dinkblam | Hacker News Reader

no year goes by without Italy imposing random >100m€ fines for 2-3 american tech companies. whenever they need money, they just hit another one without care whether actual laws were violated. the amount they take has no correlation to what has been blamed, only to how much the companies can afford to pay without threatening to leave the country.

the 'Guardia di Finanza' has a long standing tradition of trying to extort money without regards to actual laws. its not long ago that they told all companies 'if you pay X% more than your tax report says you own then we won't destroy your company'. more recently they went after the Agnelli family trying to extort money without having an actual case.

its not the rule of law, its simply Might makes Right or modern robber knights...

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> no year goes by without Italy imposing random >100m€ fines for 2-3 american tech companies. whenever they need money

Since you apparently know, how large would a 100M EUR injection into the Italian budget for 2026 actually be, relatively to the other things?

You're saying they're doing this because they need money, but wouldn't changing the tax rates be more effective at this? 100M feels like a piss in the ocean, when you talk about a country's budget, but since you seem to imply Italy is doing this survive, would be nice to know what ratio this fine represents of their budget, which I'm guessing you have in front of you already?

Italy's unconsolidated budget for 2025 is projected to be around 700 billion euros in revenue and 900 billion in expenditures:

https://www.rgs.mef.gov.it/VERSIONE-I/attivita_istituzionali...

So yeah, whoever talks about these fines as a strategy for fixing the budget knows nothing about the actual budget of a G7 state, these fines are completely immaterial to Italian fiscal policy.

For perspective, that's roughly equivalent to someone with a €50,000 annual income finding €7 on the street and someone claiming they're doing it "to survive."

From a post I saw on reddit:

> In 2024 EU fined US tech companies €3.8B meanwhile public internet tech companies paid only €3.2B in income tax

How is it not a major budget contribution to have fines on American companies bigger than revenue from your entire tech industry?

That is a de facto tax, particularly when they announce these new fines monthly like clockwork.

The relevant comparison is fines vs. actual budget, not fines vs. some cherry-picked industry segment. EU general government spending (across 27 nations) in 2023 was around €8.4 trillion. €3.8B in fines is 0.045% of that, again, completely immaterial.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1379290/government-expen...

By that standard any actual tax or other income source that’s not at least 1-2% is immaterial and should be removed?

Income tax paid by public internet tech companies is not the same as “revenues from the entire tech industry”

This report is indicating around 800B in value for the sector (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...)

While other reports have significant higher numbers https://en.ilsole24ore.com/art/tech-europe-is-worth-4000-bil...

> fines on American companies bigger than revenue from your entire tech industry?

1. As someone already mentioned, taxes != revenue

2. On top of that, "public internet companies" != "entire tech industry"

3. On top of that, tax evasion and creative accounting by "public internet companies" companies is well known, documented, and is subject to additional fines (not as often or as much as they deserve)

4. On top of that "announce these new fines monthly like clockwork" speaks volumes about the state of the "public internet companies" and there continuous disregard for the law.

Completely agree with this analysis.

Especially on the GDF aspect which is definitely true and impacting both SMBs and big Corps.

When the majority of the GDP is generated by public expenditures, you need to extort money. Which is pretty bad but that’s standard practice.

It's the EU way. The only area where they produce world-leading innovation is regulatory regimes, so gotta use it to hit up American tech companies like an ATM.

Just an idea - how about not breaking the law?

Oh please. "The law" is a Kafkaesque patchwork that delegates authority to local officials and has enough complexity and wiggle room to make anything possible. We're not talking about a speed limit sign here. Show me the [company], I'll show you the crime.

I've been assured by people in this thread and others that, for example, if you "don't spy on users", you don't need cookie banners, and yet official EU sites have them.

> Show me the [company], I'll show you the crime.

Yeah, maybe that floats the people's boat wherever you live, but in other countries where people's health and well-being go above corporate interests, it is not common for companies to break the law.

> for example, if you "don't spy on users", you don't need cookie banners, and yet official EU sites have them.

Which is true, and you can understand that yourself by not relying on others, but reading the regulation yourself. It's actually pretty simple, and I think even someone who don't like regulations would be able to get through it if you apply yourself.

And yeah, even official EU sites could avoid it if they'd chose to not use tracking cookies. Not sure what the gotcha is supposed to be here? There is no inconsistency here.

> I think even an American would be able to get through it if you apply yourself.

This doesn't belong on HN.

True, and I see now it could be read in a way I didn't intended it to, fixed it by making it clearer what I meant. Thanks :)

They can always chose not to sell their products and services in the EU if they don't want to comply with the laws here.

This, I think, is the real answer why this is happening. The motivation behind these huge fines on large U.S. tech companies by EU countries is actually "we need revenue", not "we must protect our users". I would expect this to become another source of strain between the EU and the US as the EU economy continues to atrophy. Especially so if the U.S. economy weakens, too.

European companies are fined all the time as well, you just don't see the news about it, there definitely no ill-intent vs american companies as you are trying to imply

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