France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by US

Re:France has approved a digital services tax despite threat... by CountSessine on Thursday July 11, 2019 @03:28PM (#20414794)

A corp will raise prices to whatever level the market will bear. Why shouldn't a society do the same with taxes?

A corp exists in a competitive market and can rarely raise prices to "whatever level the market will bear". If I don't like their prices, I use their competitor.

What competitor does my mandatory government and it's confiscatory tax agency have? What alternative do I have but to hand over half my work to them to be frittered away on foreign wars and grants for indolence and incompetence?

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Re:France has approved a digital services tax despite threat... by zmk_ on Thursday July 11, 2019 @03:43PM (#20415020)

What competitors will Amazon have in France if all the local competitors cannot escape paying local corporate taxes and Amazons of the word just throw a few millions at lawyers to shop around for the most convenient tax haven.

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Re:France has approved a digital services tax despite threat... by filoleg on Thursday July 11, 2019 @04:42PM (#20415622)

Ah yes, it is the lack of this tax that was preventing France from having their next Amazon. I am willing to bet significant amounts of money that even in 10 years France will have nothing even of remote resemblance of what Amazon was back in 2010, not even going to set the bar at what Amazon is today.

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Re:France has approved a digital services tax despite threat... by Hithredin on Thursday July 11, 2019 @04:58PM (#20415766)

They are talking about physical shops. Which are also competitors of Amazon. And where does your assessment comes from? Just guess?

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Re:France has approved a digital services tax despite threat... by filoleg on Thursday July 11, 2019 @07:11PM (#20416734)

>They are talking about physical shops. Which are also competitors of Amazon.

Isn't that exactly what VAT tax is for?

>And where does your assessment comes from? Just guess?

An educated guess that I am strongly confident in, to the point of willing to bet most of my savings on it. And I am not the kind of person who would usually bet any money on anything at all. My most risky money bet so far is putting a portion of my paycheck in 401k.

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Re:France has approved a digital services tax despite threat... by zmk_ on Friday July 12, 2019 @01:04PM (#20422270)

VAT is a tax on consumption, corporate taxes are on profits (revenues in this case). If Amazon does not have to pay as high corporate taxes due to transfer pricing, then it can offer a lower net (pre-VAT) price so their products end up being cheaper to consumers driving away sales from other retailers. While competition, you may say it is 'unfair' competition.

And yes, this makes it very hard for new businesses to enter the market as they do not have the resources necessary to do tax optimization.

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Re:France has approved a digital services tax despite threat... by ldng on Thursday July 11, 2019 @07:41PM (#20416895)

There is a "French Amazon" : cdiscount. They pay there tax in France. Amazon does not. How is it fair to them ?

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Re:France has approved a digital services tax despite threat... by jfk13 on Thursday July 11, 2019 @04:52PM (#20415716)

I hope you're right. What Amazon is today is a grossly dysfunctional "marketplace", and I hope to see the end of it.

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Re:France has approved a digital services tax despite threat... by hermitdev on Thursday July 11, 2019 @05:45PM (#20416179)

If tax was the burden from a French "Amazon" from founding, they also could easily have a shell in Ireland or Luxembourg. I don't see this at all as France trying to tax Amazon, et all from doing business in France. I see it as a pure money grab. Truly, this isn't really a tax, but more of a tariff. It should be called as such. Maybe it's equally applied against domestic companies and wouldn't be strictly a tariff, but it's intent is most certainly as a tariff.

Edit: I don't work for Amazon, though my brother does. I also don't work at a company that has much of a stake in this fight.

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Re:France has approved a digital services tax despite threat... by vorpalhex on Thursday July 11, 2019 @03:20PM (#20414673)

Because it's short sighted to over tax your citizens from both sides?

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Re:France has approved a digital services tax despite threat... by bmelton on Thursday July 11, 2019 @03:25PM (#20414748)

To this extent, countries compete on taxation and value-add for services. Perhaps country A charges more in taxes, but offers more education to its people, and a more educated workforce to hire from, while country B offers fewer of those amenities in exchange for lower taxes.

Inter-country competition helps to keep them honest, and corporations get to choose the luxury of where they operate from and do business out of.

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Re:France has approved a digital services tax despite threat... by umeshunni on Thursday July 11, 2019 @04:04PM (#20415240)

What's missing is the luxury for individuals to also choose their countries based on the same parameters.

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Re:France has approved a digital services tax despite threat... by vorpalhex on Thursday July 11, 2019 @03:38PM (#20414930)

That's a very thoughtful reply to my off the cuff response. Corporations and people do get to shop both taxes and benefits, but most individuals seem to treat them like a genetic condition.

There's value in competition, because it's about the closest we've been able to get to evolution. The issue comes about when competition is lopsided - I can understand the complaint here from the French, but I don't care at all for their solution.

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