France, Germany, Italy, and Spain: Go Where the Money Is

September 11, 2017

If you are desperate and need money, what do you do? Do you rob senior citizens at money machines? Do you do some MBA fancy math and craft a Madoff? Do you get a job at KFC? Forget that last option.

The answer to the question is tax Amazon, Facebook, and Google if you are a bureaucrat laboring in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Local tax revenues don’t pull the wagon. Creating conditions for high value wealth creation is too much work. If I understand “France, Germany, Italy, Spain Seek Tax on Digital Giants’ Revenues,” do the bank robber’s play: Go where the money is.

The real news outfit Reuters states:

France, Germany, Italy and Spain want digital multinationals like Amazon and Google to be taxed in Europe based on their revenues, rather than only profits as now, their finance ministers said in a joint letter.

Group think is wonderfully reassuring, particularly when there is not mechanism to determine what should be taxed by a national authority. Just tax gross revenue is a nifty way to collect money using the “close enough for horse shoes” approach.

Worth monitoring because other countries will be and then deciding how to tap into the Amazon, Facebook, and Google money rivers.

Stephen E Arnold, September 11, 2017

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