[governance] Facebook spent $4 million to lobby U.S. lawmakers in 2012

[Nick Ashton-Hart]

Guru said:

The scandalously low effective tax rates of the IT transnationals can also
be seen as some kind of implicit subsidy ... and measures/experiments like
that of the French Govt are required to help correct this situation - by
reducing the lobbying power of these corporates and also getting the
funding required by governments to support basic societal infrastructure,
including soft infrastructure like public education and public health..

My reply:

The rates being paid by IT companies are not different than other types of
companies. For example, I believe GE paid effectively 14% tax globally last
year. Corporate tax rates overall do not differentiate by sector - though,
of course, some vertical markets do get exemptions and credits designed to
encourage certain activities by them.

If you believe that companies should pay more, that's fine - but to suggest
that IT companies are particularly bad in some way does a disservice, I
think, to the overall objective which many seek: reforming the tax system
so that companies, in general, pay a larger share of tax.

This is, by the way, extremely complex and there are powerful incentives
for countries to incentivise FDI by, among other measures, favourable tax
regimes. It will be incredibly difficult to get enough countries that are
desirable markets for industry to sign up to a broad range of measures to
synchronise taxes to produce the desired end - the incentives to attract
FDI are simply very powerful.

What the French are proposing (not for the first time) is not going to help
anything; it is soapbox policy, designed for an internal audience of French
people. Like the 75% tax on wealthy individuals they propose, it wouldn't
raise enough money to solve France's real deficit issues; it would just
make France even less competitive an economy than it already is.

Folks, is tax policy really what people are interested in having an effect
on in the IGC list? Is this a battle you really want to enter into, given
the very real threats the open Internet faces today?

-- 
Regards,

Nick Ashton-Hart

*Need to meet with me? Schedule the time that suits us both here:
http://meetme.so/nashton*

Sent from my one of my handheld thingies, please excuse linguistic mangling.

On 26 Jan 2013, at 04:49, "Guru गुरु" <Guru at itforchange.net> wrote:

The scandalously low effective tax rates of the IT transnationals can also
be seen as some kind of implicit subsidy ... and measures/experiments like
that of the French Govt are required to help correct this situation - by
reducing the lobbying power of these corporates and also getting the
funding required by governments to support basic societal infrastructure,
including soft infrastructure like public education and public health..
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20130126/021923ba/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t