Saturday, July 13, 2019

Iain Thomson - We have the best trade wars: US investigating French tech tax plan over fears it unfairly targets American biz

How dare they. There are shareholders to consider




Our Western neoliberal governments are owned by the elites, for sure, but they are still cash strapped and need some revenue, and their electorate are fed up with the tax evaders with their off-shore tax havens.

France and Britain are designing new tax systems that will hit the Silicon Valley hi-tech giants, like Google and Amazon, and the US is fighting back by threatening sanctions.

Sanctions here, sanctions there, sanctions everywhere nowadays. And when we run out of steam putting sanctions on our enemies, we start throwing them about at each other.

The US has declared that it is investigating French plans to impose a 3 per cent tax on tech firms' top line, not the bottom.

That commerce is data, and lots of it. The EU is getting increasingly annoyed at tax avoidance and France has made the first move. 

The proposed GAFA [PDF] (Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon) law would be a revenue, not profit, tax.


Smashing the shell game


Over the last decade or so corporations around the world have become very good at avoiding tax, with the tech sector proving particularly adept.


The Register 

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/12/france_us_trade_war/

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