Up to €30 million repayments since 2012? Is that it? these companies have billions of revenue and yet that's all they have to pay? How about fining them and the countries for doing so? This just seems wholly unfair.
This may be a small step in getting global players to play fairer, but from what I can tell this is still cheating the system and depriving countries and their citizens of badly needed tax income. All while competing unfairly with smaller non-global companies.
I don't get why the EU still hasn't managed to get this under control.
It's profits that get taxed, not revenues. By the way, Starbucks had an effective tax rate of close to 35% in 2014. So it's not like they aren't paying any taxes. The whole issue is about that mythical concept of a "fair share" of taxes.
My idea of "fair" would be to make taxes porportionate to the extent to which public infrastructures of a country are used. That may be easier to achieve through fees than through taxes, which would come closer to your idea of taxing revenues.
I would say that fees would be more fair, yes -- I don't see why the amount a company pays for using public resources should vary with its profitability: even if they don't make any money, or shift profits to a subsidiary abroad, the resources are being used anyway.
I'd posit that a far better way to judge tax contributions would be to compare them to a company's market cap. That's where we'll likely see stark realization that multi-national corporations are living the good life.
The problem with that is that changes in market cap don't directly translate to taxable income -- and when they do, they do already get taxed through capital gains.
Capital gains tax is paid by the owners of the company when they dispose of shares, not by the corporation itself.
But I agree that using market cap is not a good basis for taxation. Most companies don't even have a market cap as they are not publicly traded. And among those that do it would hurt the most innovative companies disproportionatly.
Companies would start paying dividends way too early to keep the share price low instead of investing and growing the business. Tesla has a market cap of $27bn. They would pay more than half of what GM pays in taxes if market cap was used as a basis.
I'd rather they use that money to keep innovating and tax them later on when they make a real profit and use a greater share of public infrastructures.
tax-income is first "taken" from the citizens, then the government produces services with mediocre-to-bad performance. It is generally mediocre-to-bad because there are no customer-pressure to excellence in govt. provided services. People do not pay directly, services seems to be "free", so everybody accept them as they are and nobody complains. (e.g. DMV)
Starbucks must produce a good and consistent product or go broke. Governments can produce abismal services and nothing happens.
Maybe this is a problem with your government, rather than government in general? The government produces quite good services in many European countries, especially in northern Europe. And large companies generally have very poor service.
Example: I used to live in Denmark, where the healthcare system is run by the government, and now I live in the USA, where it isn't. For me, the Danish system was far more user-friendly.
You are correct. In my country the services are abismal and corruption is rampant. I guess in Denmark there are better morals and/or a sane idealism and services are better.
Culture plays a fundamental role.
This may be a small step in getting global players to play fairer, but from what I can tell this is still cheating the system and depriving countries and their citizens of badly needed tax income. All while competing unfairly with smaller non-global companies.
I don't get why the EU still hasn't managed to get this under control.