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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?

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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.

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.

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?

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