Reply to post: Re: Basic accountancy problem

Guess who doesn't have to pay $1.3bn in back taxes? Of course it's fscking Google

Jon 37

Re: Basic accountancy problem

Sold by a French Ad salesman to a French company, marketing a French product, in French, at a French audience in France. But the actual ad serving happens in a Google-owned data centre in Ireland and the reason the company is profitable is technology and a brand developed in the USA. The French ad salesman is managed by a local boss, who has bosses in Ireland who in turn are managed by bosses in the USA. The servers are managed by Google's global ops team. Google also has a huge international communications network that is essential to its success. The servers and some of the networking hardware were custom made in the Far East to designs developed in China and the USA.

So at least SOME of the money Google makes in France should be treated as profit in the USA, and some should probably count as profit in Ireland. How much... that's something the lawyers will love to argue over for as long as possible, there's no obvious way to choose a "right" answer.

Note that the sales in France are subject to French VAT, payable to the French government. And the employees in France are subject to French income & payroll taxes. So perhaps we ought to just give up on taxing company profit, and slightly raise VAT & payroll taxes to compensate?

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