Re: You're all smart people (cough cough)
The designer in Germany is paid for their work, employed by some entity whether it is the individual or an employer. There will be income for the work and tax paid on it. Same for the manufacturer in China. The Polish national working in the UK will pay VAT. The servers in Ireland will be run by an entity that will receive income for their work. And all the software engineers will be paid for their work.
Each entity will have an income, whether that be as an autonomous contractor, or an internal department where wooden dollars are passed around. In the latter case it is easy to define the income, as each division of a company is measured for its worth, but that internal metric may not be what is presented to the tax-raising authorities.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
