Comment on Poland presses ahead with 3 percent digital tax despite Trump threat

First_Thunder@lemmy.zip ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

• skisnow@lemmy.ca ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Generally (for most countries that do this, I haven’t researched Poland) the point is that traditional (non-digital) companies have always paid import duties, usually much higher than 3%, when goods are physically imported. Digital goods by their nature have effectively been skirting the system for a few decades, and it’s not good for local businesses to be in a situation where they’re paying a bunch of taxes locally but foreign businesses competing in the same market get to just skip it.

  The $750M requirement is likely because the amount of paperwork required for a small business to correctly calculate, process and pay that tax would be prohibitively expensive for them to sell their service to Polish customers, and they don’t want a situation where small businesses just straight up refuse to sell in Poland.

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  • thebestaquaman@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Exactly this. The whole premise of the tax system is based around the historically correct idea that you need to physically move goods in order to sell them, or physically be somewhere to sell services.

    Companies like google are making buckets of money all over the world, and don’t need to tax a dime most places, because they have no physical presence there. This makes it pretty much impossible to compete with the international behemoths, because they have access to a munch of tax-free revenue, while a startup will typically be centred around wherever they’re based, where they also need to pay taxes.

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    • Evil_Incarnate@sopuli.xyz ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Not to mention that they say they don’t have to abide by local laws because they aren’t located there.

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