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Re:Tech giants face 2% UK digital services tax by jedberg on Monday October 29, 2018 @04:15PM (#18330935)
Sure but then why not just raise taxes on UK citizens?

The whole point of this tax is to penalize the "tech giants" which happen to all be American, and it won't really do that.

Re:Tech giants face 2% UK digital services tax by bertil on Monday October 29, 2018 @05:58PM (#18331935)
Those companies are 100% American: they rely on technologies like the Web invented by an English scientist working at the frontier of France and Switzerland. They rely on algorithms invented by Russian, French, German scientist. They hire students from university around the world, to be engineers, managers, salesperson for clients also from everywhere in the world.

If those companies want to keep on hiring people without staggering student’s debt, they need to contribute to the local economy. I know they already do that (I worked for such companies for long enough, and paid a lot of taxes locally) but my point was twofold:

- paying more tax is often a good thing for the people who are going to benefit from the corresponding government services; that is certainly the case in the UK;

- if your company develops, promotes and sells products in a country, it makes sense to also pay added-value- and profit-tax there, and not avoid tax by claiming that the value was created in a tax shelter like Suriname, where you have no activity.