Re: Vive la France
Taxes are not paid on costs, but on profits. Hence, they artificially inflate the IP each country subsidiary has to pay, in order to reduce profits. Then they move the 'owner' of the IP to a country like Ireland, where they sign a sweetheart deal. It's actually sickening how these companies get away with it. I worked for Apple in Ireland, and calculated I personally paid more taxes than them ... sickening, really. I now have my own company and see this behavior from ALL of the multinationals, and I really feel this should be an EU priority. If you are doing business in the EU, you get taxed on the profits in each country. End of story. We the people went through years of government-imposed austerity; due to severe budgetary issues; many of them created by US multinationals and investment banks. The money these companies should have been paying in taxes have been robbed from the citizenry of these countries, forcing them to make up the difference. In no way am I a Marxist, I just feel there should be a fair playing field.