Who decides who gets subsidized by facebook or not? Seems like the government wa...

rukuu001 · on Feb 25, 2021

Good question.

One of the legislation changes Facebook negotiated was if they have ‘enough’ commercial agreements in place, the code won’t apply to them.

I’d love to see a definition of ‘enough’

* edit for autocorrect

catmanjan · on Feb 25, 2021

Probably, Facebook pays zero tax in Australia, and I'm sure the government will be taxing this tithe...

shanecp · on Feb 25, 2021

That assumption is incorrect. They already pay taxes, both directly and indirectly (collected from people as GST).

jeeeb · on Feb 25, 2021

Nitpick: It would be more correct to say that FB collects GST for the Australian Tax Office. In an accounting sense only consumers actually pay GST.

Also worth pointing out that FB’s tax bill in Australia is pretty minimal (rightly or wrongly). The tax on these payments could easily end up being worth more than Facebook’s tax bill in Australia.

FB’s Australian revenue last year was $2.2 billion on which they paid $13.5 million in tax (https://www.afr.com/companies/media-and-marketing/google-fac...).

Actually if you think of these measures as a creative way around US strong arming on a digital services tax they make a lot more sense despite the legislation itself being a weird mess.