EU lost up to €5.4B in tax revenues from Google, Facebook: report

Re:EU lost up to €5.4B in tax revenues from Google, Facebook... by theptip on Thursday September 14, 2017 @05:32AM (#15246263)

A problem with this solution -- as a US company without a German subsidiary (but as with most online businesses, with German customers), do I now have to pay taxes in Germany?

If the former, the logical conclusion of that approach is that every startup has to pay taxes in all 195 countries of the world, as soon as they open for business. This could be on $0.01 of ad revenue.

If the latter, I'm strongly incentivized to move my labor from the high-tax countries to the low-tax ones, which will push business out of the former. (I.e. at the margin, if I have a small office in Germany, it's probably not worth my while to keep it open since it incurs a massive tax liability).

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Re:EU lost up to €5.4B in tax revenues from Google, Facebook... by aembleton on Thursday September 14, 2017 @11:21AM (#15248915)

No, you wouldn't have to pay taxes in Germany. But, if you sell to German businesses, such as providing hosting services then they wouldn't be able to deduct that as costs when calculating their taxes.

They would only be able to deduct German costs, defined as the employment of someone with a NI number (or German equivalent) or another business with a tax number.

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Re:EU lost up to €5.4B in tax revenues from Google, Facebook... by taysic on Saturday September 16, 2017 @02:28PM (#15265896)

So you disincentivize using any services in countries other than the one your subsidiary is in? They would have to be significantly better than other options to be worth not being able to deduct those costs.

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