Poland presses ahead with 3 percent digital tax despite Trump threat

Comments

• Redex68@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Wait, how does this work? I am for the EU to retaliate with tariffs against the US, but how is Poland able to do it by itself? Isn’t the EU supposed to have a common trade policy?

  source

  • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Well… Taxes are not unified, trade policy is supposed to be. So this is kinda gray area as it is a tax affecting trade specifically.

    source
• vermaterc@lemmy.ml ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Might be hard to do, it needs to be approved by president of Poland which is a big fan of Trump (contrary to current government)

  source
• skisnow@lemmy.ca ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  companies whose global revenues exceed €750 million, effectively targeting larger U.S. tech companies

  For me the brass-neckedness of this is that as soon as it comes to tax, all the big “U.S.” companies are actually Irish, Bermudan and Caymanian companies.

  source
• BuneZT@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  The current president is vetoing every law he can

  source

  • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Surprising no one.

    source
  • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    This one deserves vetoing.

    source
• Bebopalouie@lemmy.ca ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  They have more balls than Canada. Pokes Carney with a stick.

  source
• masterofn001@lemmy.ca ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Paging r/polandball

  Can you poke Canada with a stick now?

  source
• majster@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  So they are trying to substitute company profit tax? I just checked with Google and they include VAT on subscription so it doesn’t seem the case that there is no tax.

  source
• homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I thought he loved Three Percenters

  source
• Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  When US DNS servers (and Cloudflare) turn off access to and from Poland, I'll be interested. Until then, the digital taxes are interesting but empty threats as far as the corps are concerned.

  source
• First_Thunder@lemmy.zip ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  This just sounds like higher VAT on large tech companies? Isn’t it a regressive tax?

  source

  • skisnow@lemmy.ca ⁨17⁩ ⁨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.

    source

    • thebestaquaman@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨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.

      source

      • -> View More Comments