Personally, I'm in favour of taxing Internet companies
Why?
EDIT: I was just curious to hear more.
Why?
EDIT: I was just curious to hear more.
Google quasi-legally avoids a huge amount of tax. Everyone accepts that reducing your tax burden is legitimate, but there comes a point when it is taking the piss.
Paying tax is part of being a member of society. People and corporations not wanting to pay any tax should not be able to claim the benefits tha result from that tax burden. Google benefits from UK education. Google should fucking pay for it.
The scary thing is that Google isn't that bad compared to other companies. The scale is huge but the techniques are run of the mill. See some of the water companies who have baffling corporate structures and who use international intra-business loans in order to avoid corporation tax, all while paying massive bonuses to staff, increasing costs to consumers, under funding maintainance, etc. it's infuriating.
Back in the days, the nobility had also exempted itself from taxes. I see no reason for this state of affairs to continue.
They recently passed a similar tax in Italy, and the whole thing was about how the big bad American companies are making money and not investing in Italy. This, at the same time Fiat is decamping from Italy because the business climate is so shitty. So what's their creative answer to improve things? Another tax!
.ie is the loophole, most of the time.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/ireland-business-blog-wi...
Disclaimer: I am Irish
Because all other companies are being taxed when offering products or services to citizens of the given country, within the legislation of that country. Certain Internet companies use questionable tax planning strategies (in Europe as well as the US) to pay a ridiculously small amount of taxes and thus gaining an unfair advantage.
> Or Why should taxes exist at all?
Because running a country costs money which is required to provide services such as law enforcement and a regulated banking system. These services are required by citizens and corporations alike.
But going further down this argument is obviously not in the scope of this discussion thread and will not end up being a fruitful conversation. We're talking about a small-ish change to the tax system rather than a full blown anarchist revolution here.