[governance] Re: Telecom TV on Google and Taxes

[Riaz K Tayob]

On 2012/12/13 12:39 PM, parminder wrote:
> I mean that while tax accrual is of course national, the issue of fair 
> accrual and distribution in case of global businesses, especially when 
> transacted in the global cyberspace, in indeed an international issue 
> and not just national...

Parminder, this is essentially a distribution issue - trickle up or 
trickle down. As McTim puts it, these games on tax that are played are 
legal... and with the fungibility of Intellectual Property Rights (ever 
wonder why DVD recorders cost way more than VCRs used to and are less 
available) and digital transactions ON TOP of a reckoning system that 
allows transfer pricing (for anything, digital or otherwise) this makes 
for a complex issue. But legality certainly matters. One has to add to 
the mix the US Congress (acting for their base, not the voters perhaps) 
tax holidays for repatriation of earnings sans tax, then we are talking 
about the issue in a more appropriate, imho, context...

So looking at who benefits is important, in the context of how does the 
state through tax benefit/redistribute. Also important is the way common 
cause is made between public interest and the pursuit of profit. There 
is sometimes a good convergence and other times not. It depends.

On 2012/12/13 01:54 PM, Carlos A. Afonso wrote:
> What is the proper way to define a policy on this for us? 

Here there are technical issues, but also distributional ones. Those who 
make the free market/liberal type (at the risk of some 
oversimplification) arguments without taking market 
power/share/dominance into account seem to miss the seminal issues 
raised by this tax issue.

On 2012/12/13 03:05 PM, McTim wrote:
> but don't criticize companies for doing things that are legal!

As the financial crisis shows, the problem IS what is legal. Is it fair? 
Is it just? Is it equitable? For civil society, and the remarkable Tax 
Justice Network (or UK UnCut) these are fair questions.

And here we may well differ.



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