> It kind of is, though, isn't it? The online ad market is theoretically super efficient - if the market clearing price for an ad is $1, and then you add a 10% sales tax, it no longer makes sense to bid / pay $1 for that ad, knowing that you will be out of pocket $1.10. Instead you would bid about 90-91 cents, knowing that it would get marked up to $1 with tax. Net effect is that Google only makes 90 cents on that ad instead of a dollar, even though they aren't directly paying the tax.

Not if you have to bid against people in other jurisdictions for the same ad spaces. Then the people in the taxing jurisdiction have to bid the market price or lose the auction to someone in another place that doesn't impose the tax. In theory this could have a negative impact on ad prices, but it isn't going to be anything like the entire amount of the tax.

Is there a reason that tax couldn't be imposed on the buyer, collected by Google at time of "sale" (click through by customer on ad), and remitted to the government, regardless of buyer origin? In other words, if I live in Montana (no sales tax) and I pay Google to display ads in Spain, I don't see a good reason to not have to pay Spain's "sales tax" (or whatever we're calling it) on those ads. I don't see why it should matter where the ad buyer lives, or where the ad clicker lives. I'm paying an entity in Spain, therefore the entity in Spain is taxed (and that higher cost ultimately flows back to me, the buyer). Or am I not really paying the Spanish entity when I buy those ads?

> Or am I not really paying the Spanish entity when I buy those ads?

I'm pretty sure you pay the entity in the country that you are located in, so the Montana rancher is paying Google USA. Basically, you need a corporate presence in most places in order to _sell_ to people in those places. People in Spain pay Google Spain to place ads _as far as I understand it_—I'm not an expert on EU tax regulations.

You forget that european VAT is cancelled with businesses upstream, that is, you can deduct the VAT charged to consumers with the VAT of your purchases so you only owe the net amount. Also there is no unified european tax rate, there are some tax havens inside the EU.

However, Google does not make very much purchases in EU, so there is not so much VAT to deduct, which means that much of the VAT is "real" tax revenue, not just a flow-through amount. This is simply because Google doesn't have a substantial part of its real operations in EU; it has sales offices, and in some countries it has data centers, but these are not such a big cost that the VAT would factor in by too much.

The actual value of Google is in its business concept, IPR and brand name, none of which are substantially developed in Europe.

> Google does not make very much purchases in EU, so there is not so much VAT to deduct

I was arguing about the scheme that AnthonyMouse discussed. Also they can't recover all the other taxes "owed" to Spain by means of VAT.

AnthonyMouse > So now there is an independent contractor in Spain that pays Google Ireland for ad space and resells it for just enough money to pay its own bills and makes no profits.

If the VAT rate in Spain were higher than in Ireland the difference would stay in Spain. In that case marginal increse in the VAT rate would increase tax revenues, whereas and increase in income tax would not.

But right now VAT is higher in Ireland(23%) than in Spain(21%) and increasing the VAT rate can have sideffects on the economy as a whole.