Italy cancels "Google tax" on web companies | Hacker News Reader

Italy cancels "Google tax" on web companies

uk.reuters.com

80 pointsgioi28 comments

The new prime minister, Matteo Renzi, was responsible for getting rid of this. Yesterday, he was visiting a startup incubator in Treviso: http://www.h-farmventures.com/

He's been in office since February 22nd.

It's not a bad start, by the admittedly bad standards of Italian politics. There's a lot still to do, but Italy has so much good stuff that other countries simply will never have that, as someone said, it doesn't need to be better than Sweden, the Netherlands, and so on, it just needs to stop sucking quite so bad, and it could be a more attractive place to do business.

Renzi may have cancelled it but anyone in his place would have done the same, because the tax was illegal. It was against EU's policy and the fact that it came so far as to be approved only highlights the incompetence of Italy's lawmakers.

Sadly, everybody does that, and you can get by for years before something happens.

I.e. since 2000 the EU started more than 150 "violation procedures" for violation of the treaties, against 15 countries.

It it sometimes just more convenient to ignore a treaty now and fix it in a decade.

+1 Incompetency and emergency are the root of the "Google/Web tax" and any other delayed/rejected actions.

Italy is inside a "thick fog", politicians would like foreign investiments while italian big brands are abondoning the country FIAT / FCA, STM Microelectronics,..

Unlike much of the rest of southern Europe, Italy still has a fairly strong engineering sector as well, with some profitable export businesses. Not Germany-level export business, but still pretty good. The metro system here in Copenhagen runs Italian-made trains, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AnsaldoBreda_Driverless_Metro

In the Low Lands they have less positive experiences with AnsaldoBreda - the high speed trains turned out to be unfixable (according to Dutch & Belgian Rail): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyra

"They entered service in December 2012 - five years later than originally planned.[19] They were taken out of service the following month due to numerous technical issues. Four months later only two of the 9 already delivered trains were still capable of performing test runs.[9]"

Same here actually: the intercity trains have been a fiasco (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IC4#Controversy). But the metro system works well.

no idea how Belgium rail company can even complain about that train considered that some of their machines are coming from same pre historical era.

San Francisco's light rail system also uses trains made by Breda.

Let's not call AnsaldoBreda an example of good engineering...

Italy has a lot of niche engineering businesses that are pretty good, and a lot of talented people who work for a lot less than they'd get elsewhere. If the politicians made it an easier place to do business, I think a lot of foreign companies would invest.

Where are you from Davidw? As an Italian I feel insulted by such claims. I have worked with American, British and German people and I have often found that Italian people are better prepared, more humble, more hard-working and less arrogant than their foreign counterparts. While the Google tax maybe illegal it's extremely unfair that big companies have legal means to avoid the standard tax regulations that are in place in a given county. This is simply unfair competition as much as China can compete unfairly in some sectors and industries. And this has nothing to do with innovation in fact this is the kind of things that could even hinder innovation in Italy. How can an Italian company compete on the same grounds with another one if the spread on taxes is more than 35%?

I'm from Oregon.

> As an Italian I feel insulted by such claims.

Which claims? That Italy has a lot to offer that other countries don't? Or that the politicians are by and large incompetent? Or that it's a terrible place to do business?

http://doingbusiness.org/rankings - look at where Italy is there.

> I have worked with American, British and German people and I have often found that Italian people

I have worked with lots of people too, and found that Italians are often quite skilled programmers with good communication skills. Although English is not always a strong spot, the underlying ability to easily communicate and deal with other people is usually quite strong. Italians don't take home a lot of money compared to other countries, so with lower taxes, their wages could easily be quickly bid up by foreign companies taking advantage of highly skilled labor at competitive prices.

> While the Google tax maybe illegal it's extremely unfair that big companies have legal means to avoid the standard tax regulations that are in place in a given county

As Renzi said, this is something to be dealt with at a European/International level. Not with some stupid, ineffective law that merely makes Italy look bad, and does next to nothing to Google, merely passing on extra costs to Italian companies.

> This is simply unfair competition as much as China can compete unfairly in some sectors and industries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage

There are probably some things where Chinese competition is genuinely 'unfair', but that's a pretty huge topic, and a lot of their advantage has been low labor costs. So, unfair in the same sense that Italy has an unfair advantage over Finland in producing quality wine...

> How can an Italian company compete on the same grounds with another one if the spread on taxes is more than 35%?

Answer: they can't. That's part of the reason the economy has stagnated over the past 20 years. But that's not China's fault, nor Google's fault.

The good news is that it is a solvable problem, and indeed, the basic recipe is pretty well known at this point. People just have to get their courage up and do it.

http://www.corriere.it/editoriali/14_febbraio_21/purche-si-d...

http://www.amazon.com/Good-Italy-Bad-Conquer-Demons/dp/03001...

if you are from Oregon what makes you so competent about Italian problems? The fact that you haven taken a look at a bunch of articles posted on the internet? Or rather do you have some Italian relatives or have you attempted to start a business in Italy? Because a positive answer to this last question is the only one I would accept. I am offended because I feel that there is a strong judgmental sentiment towards Italy by people and media especially in the UK ( but also in the US) that is alimented only by superficiality.

> some Italian relatives

Yes - my wife, and children, although the children have dual Italian-US citizenship. We live in Padova.

> or have you attempted to start a business in Italy?

Are you crazy? Do you have any idea how much that costs?

In Oregon, it costs $100 to create an LLC, the equivalent of an Srl, and you can do everything online.

It is easier these days to start a company in Italy, thanks, in some small part, to my efforts:

http://www.governo.it/Notizie/Presidenza/dettaglio.asp?d=690...

But it's still very difficult compared to most places in the US, UK or even many other European countries.

I agree with you that there are a lot of stereotypes, but Italy having awful bureaucracy and a bad judicial system is pretty much a fact.

Like I said though, the positive thing in all this is that the problems are all things that can be fixed if more people apply themselves rather than simply complaining.

A personal note:

Francesco Boccia (the proposer), Enrico Letta (old prime minister) and Matteo Renzi come all from the same politic party, Partito Democratico. Web tax was proposed when Matteo Renzi was already the secretary of the Party.

spaghetti big brother

To be part of the PD does not mean to have all the same ideas about every topic, this is part of a democratic process.

To be fair, PD is the only italian party whose direction has been elected democratically (I'm Italian and I voted to the last PD primarie).

What's wrong with this democratic process? Internal debate started only after approving law. Don't you think this is... wrong?

This looks like Continuous Delivery, but in facts they are not so fast to rollback when users complaints.

This doesn't contradict antirez's comment :)

And antirez's comment doesn't contradict mine :)

If I'm uniderstanding correctly, this is nothing like the Spanish "Google tax", which states that aggregators (like reddit and HN... well, their spanish counterparts like Menéame) and search engines have to pay a fee to the press. Has this been discussed here? Info: http://elpais.com/elpais/2014/02/14/inenglish/1392391558_174...

still, Europe needs to fix the "double irish with a dutch sandwich" because there's indeed a problem,

That's the point. While the Googletax was a mistake the "doublle irish with a dutch sandiwhich" must be absolutely fixed. It allows companies to drain resources from any country ( and not only Italy) without contributing fairly to taxes based on the generated revenues.

what the hell is "Google tax"

Try reading the article.

> The tax, designed to ensure firms that advertise and sell in Italy do so only through companies with a tax presence there...

This is the previous discussion here, for some context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6960119

Reply on news.ycombinator.com