Upset that multinational corporations use such things as legal tax havens and the law to minimize their tax burden, the Germans want to impose some sort of “international” tax on technology companies like Google and Amazon.
“We need a minumum tax rate valid globally which no state can get out of (applying),” Scholz, a social democrat in conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition government, told the “Welt am Sonntag” weekly.
Europe is trying to devise a strategy to tax profits from the likes of Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and digital platforms such as YouTube and Airbnb which currently manage to keep fiscal exposure to a bare minimum.
Digital platforms “aggravate a problem which we know well from globalisation and which we are trying to counter — the shifting of profits to fiscally beneficial regions,” said Scholz.
Of course they do. In the minds of statists and the governments they support, the State owns all capital and corporations and individuals have no right to avoid (note: not evade) paying the taxes said governments feel they are owed.
Shareholders of said corporations, however, insist on the companies’ avoidance of paying unnecessary taxes.
Mind you, I’m anything but a fan of Big Tech myself, the poxy monopolists; but given the option between Big Tech and Big Government… no prizes for guessing my choice here. To paraphrase Trey Parker (of South Park fame): I hate Big Tech; but I really hate Big Government, and the foul neo-socialist European governments most of all.
A few years ago I learned that NJ (and probably other states) have in their budget an item, sorry I forget the term they use, which amounts to the amount of money the population made that the state did NOT collect in taxes. Basically, as far as the state is concerned, they start with all money made by everyone in the state and they have a negative line-item for the amount they let the people keep. That politicians did not festoon lamp posts and trees is testament to either the good-nature or stupidity of the populace.
Stupidity, Mark, but good nature was never excluded from that definition.
It’s stupidity in that they’re sheep who have been raised to believe that the common good is more important than their rights, and I’ve been told that I may have to give up my rights for everyone else’s good.
DNA? Maybe, but every generation or so it seems someone utters “ein volk, ein rei…” and promises another lap will win the race…