Ads don't make money from thin air; someone pays for those ads. Google accesses a market of French advertisers, and that market exists because of French government.

(Also, arguably, French eyeballs are a resource belonging to France, which Google exploits.)

There are plenty of global advertisers/propagandists willing to pay Google to manipulate the french people. Claiming someone's eyeballs are owned by a government is silly.

> Google accesses a market of French advertisers, and that market exists because of French government.

Why don't you try justifying that one? Because I posit that if the French government didn't exist the market would exist anyway.

Yeah. In the same way the Somalian market did in the 2000s.

The market would exist, but it's value wouldn't be anywhere near valuable for online advertising.

Without a government the only way of maintaining your wealth is being a warring faction. Those rarely require advertising online.

Without government or with a dysfunctional government that is not able to enforce security and laws that businesses rely on, there would be chaotical environment leading to increased poverty, see the Middle East mess. There would always be some demand for things and thus some kind of market, but it would look quite differently from markets in western countries.

Anyway, the ultimate authority on which taxes and to what percentage will be imposed is the guy with the most power to execute decisions in the country. In France, that guy is the France government. You may think that this particular new rule is unfair, but I think the lawmakers do not care. There are already many taxes that are unfair from certain points of view, such as income tax. Life in a country run by a government is not fair, if you interact with the country, you have to obey its laws, the government is not interested whether you agree with them (that is, unless there is many of you so you can get together and put pressure on the government).

The great lawless free market utopia that every libertarian wet dreams of

Please don't post unsubstantive comments here, and especially not ideological flamebait. It leads to ideological flamewars, which are a low form of discussion that we're trying not to get sucked into here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

How does your comment respond to my question? Your comment adds nothing to the discussion, it's just lazy nonsense that a child could have come up with.

Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the guidelines yourself. That only makes this place even worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

How can the eyeballs in France view ads if there was chaos outside, and gangs started to cut internet cables? How can eyeballs view ads if they didn't learn from French schools how to go to Google.com and enter search queries?

You missed the question. why is France charging tax to these particular companies? As opposed to all companies?

Your answer makes no distinction between them so doesn't actually answer the question.

The reason is because they setup their company legal structures to avoid paying tax, either in France or the US.

Then the US every decade or so gives a money repatriation tax amnesty, effectively providing huge subsidies to US firms dodging all these taxes.

So the government decided to setup a new tax they couldn't. Can't really blame them.

that's the point the French are bringing up. French companies pay French taxes. Internet companies serve French markets, take French money, but pay taxes elsewhere, and often they pay no taxes because they can shop around to find a friendly tax haven that doesn't charge them taxes.

This is only possible because internet. So, they're imposing a tax on companies that serve French customers via the internet but aren't based in France, so that all companies pay tax again.

Does that make sense?

Why isn't the solution then to force all companies doing business in France to register with the French government and pay taxes on the portion of revenues derived from France?

How do you think the tax system works?

As soon as you do business,you have to register yourself to the "tax office"..

Now you structure you company in such a way, that the company pays more money for the trademarks of your partner company, than you make.

Now of course, that is something a small company with 50 people can't do.

So the company with 50 people can't make ends meet, and the company which makes 200 million, continous to make money hand over fist.

It is almost already the case. However, there is a loophole. To avoid crashing starting businesses, the current tax is on profits, not on revenues. What big internet companies like Google and Apple do is splitting their companies in several entities. One entity is making the revenues. The other is "administrative services". The administrative one, located in a low-tax country, bills (highly) the one that makes the revenues. So the revenues are made in rich european countries, but the profits are made in the low-tax ones. (The example is oversimplified, but you get the idea). This is clearly cheating, but it's legal. Europe didn't manage to close the loophole because of the countries who profit from it. And no single cheated country has yet acted because the US backs this behavior.

Considering only foreign ones (local ones are already covered), the first explanation I can find is that for most of them it would just be an expensive and pointless exercise.

The time and costs involved to setup, maintain and enforce such a system would be ridiculously high compared to what it would bring in.

Another answer (still only considering foreign businesses) would be that for companies making so little, the burden could be much greater, hindering their growth (and future taxability).

And that's just from the tip of my head

It's probably forbidden by EU regulations.

Then they would shift net profit to a more favorable environment, i.e. by paying some contrived royalties to the Irish sister company?

That's exactly what they are currently doing. Current tax law applies to profits, so they shift them to ireland.

> So, they're imposing a tax on companies that serve French customers via the internet but aren't based in France

Actually, this would be unconstitutionnal. French companies meeting the criteria will also pay taxes.

Companies providing services in France typically pay VAT, corporate income taxes or similar.

This tax is specifically on revenue that doesn't do that.

(Not that I am a proponent of this tax)

One cannot sell adds to French companies without paying VAT. That is plain illegal and there is no way to go around it, it's on the invoice.

Because other companies are already covered by tax laws.

They try fooling around with said laws, but for them it's illegal and they better not get caught.

1. Satellites

2. You don't need French schools to learn how to Google things

Why would anyone advertise to french customers if there is no functioning french economy, and thus no money to be made there? How would french consumers pay for satellite access without a functioning economy?

The next installment of the Mad Max franchise will focus on a fearless Amazon courier driving around in the lawless postapocalyptic wasteland, delivering smart speakers and juice presses to scattered communities of ragtag survivors.

>Why would anyone advertise to french customers if there is no functioning french economy

Political propaganda/advertising is a great investment in times of choas/crisis.

>How would french consumers pay for satellite access without a functioning economy?

Use crypto currency or foreign currencies.

I'm devil's advocating here a bit, but how do you make money showing ads when the people those ads are targetting can't read, have no money and don't own a computer?

Advertising needs a luxury tax for wasting peoples attention, preventing them from being productive and encouraging unhealthy habits - like alcohol and cigarettes.

Agreed. Also don't forget the massive contribution advertising has to ecological destruction by creating insatiable consumerism.

Nope.

They need a sufficient internet infrastructure. People with access to it.

People with money to spend.

People with enough peace of mind to spend it on something else than absolute essentials.

People with enough peace of mind and free time to leisurely waste on mostly useless websites.

People to whom the physical goods of a great number of their advertisers can be delivered (infrastructure & post system).

Eyeballs alone are worthless.

The differences in CPC between an affluent white male working in tech in San Francisco and a poor black woman selling peanuts on the street in Rufisque, Senegal (which isn't even the most extreme opposite one could think of) is proof of that.

Nah, the internet functions fine without the French government, and people are always looking to exploit the poor and helpless.

>The differences in CPC between an affluent white male working in tech in San Francisco and a poor black woman selling peanuts on the street in Rufisque, Senegal (which isn't even the most extreme opposite one could think of) is proof of that.

Why then are advertising giants like FB so eagerly expanding into "3rd world" markets and offering "free internet"?

So, you think the French networking infrastructure builds and maintains itself? Companies tend to only build infrastructures in very populated areas where it will quickly turn to profit. French government and collectivities have to incentivize, legalize and pay for them to properly cover the territory. (and to this day there are still a few zones where internet is only available through satellite).

Who do you think built most of the historical (56k & ADSL) network in France?

The French government.

As for expanding into "3rd world" markets, the average monthly Senegalese salary appears to be 139€. And this is a country considered to be doing well in the region.

They're expanding and offering "free internet" because there's nowhere else to go. Because even though it's poor now, there's growth, and they want to be established and deeply encroached when those markets will become worth it. Because they believe better and wider internet coverage will spur even more growth.

The only reason these companies can exist and be worth anything today is because of all the groundwork and investment that has been and continuously is made.

They have saturation, or as near as they are likely to get, of the valuable eyeballs.

Where else could they expand?

Why would they invest so heavily there if there was nothing to be gained?

Not nothing. Market maximising - if there's nowhere else to sell in the developed world, go to the developing world and take 5% or whatever their margin is, on a much lower value of sales (for now).

I'd say it's pretty obviously a calculated risk that they'll develop in value once hooked. Didn't Facebook have a scheme that gave net access in the developing world that re-created the AOL model? Free internet, but it's only FB internet.

The complete or comparative lack of regulation in many areas probably encourages too.

Worked for tobacco companies, works for most other industries.