DC faces Silicon Valley's riches and ever-growing power

Re:DC faces Silicon Valley's riches and ever-growing power by CM30 on Sunday April 17, 2016 @03:23PM (#11515862)

Have you seen that law about taxes for ecommerce in Europe? In the US, the shop collects tax for the country the shop is based in. In Europe, the shop has to pay taxes related to the country the people buying the products are in. This significantly increases the complexity of running an ecommerce business in Europe.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-supplying-dig...

It was an idea with some logic behind it, but it basically cripples European internet businesses compared to US ones by making taxes that much complicated to calculate.

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Re:DC faces Silicon Valley's riches and ever-growing power by eli_gottlieb on Sunday April 17, 2016 @03:37PM (#11515932)

> In the US, the shop collects tax for the country the shop is based in.

Legally, Americans are obligated to pay sales tax for internet purchases in the state where we live. There's a form for it, every year.

The American move is to shift the burden of tax collection onto the customer, thus ensuring that the taxes are evaded rather than paid. I don't really see moving bureaucracy onto customers rather than businesses - thus increasing the total amount of records that must be kept and paperwork that must be filed to abide perfectly by the law and pay one's taxes - as a good thing.

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Re:DC faces Silicon Valley's riches and ever-growing power by officialchicken on Sunday April 17, 2016 @06:45PM (#11516697)

Agree. But it's not too bad as long as the companies require invoice (in EU sense of the term) to include VAT/VIES/CIF. The cost or price of an outside accountant to deal with your tech is not too affordable for a startup... 20,000+ euro/year just to do the book keeping.

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