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The government can simply pass a law. There are far bigger injustices. Why do I pay taxes and Facebook doesn‘t?


FB pays insane amounts of taxes. Employment taxes, property taxes, etc. Not to mention taxes on any profits.


As a percentage of their profit? Let me check. Around here small businesses pay around 30%, individuals can pay up to 45%. I doubt Facebook pays that.

The tax avoidance schemes in Europe are well documented for all tech companies.

And what do you mean by employment taxes? Just the employers part of the income tax?


Why would a company pay the same tax rate as a person? A company pays a tax rate of x% because that income is also taxed when they distribute it to individuals. Thus we've built a system that incentivizes them to invest it back in the company (doesn't always work - but that was the intent).

So 21% + 15% to 20% capex on individuals = a tax rate around the same.

Now, if you really want to look at the big picture, look at a company's tax rate of 21% on profits, but they also pay taxes on employees of ~21% of salary in the USA not to mention health care (which in europe would be included as taxes so maybe in Europe 46% to 50%). So if payroll is 40% of your costs that is another 8.4% of taxes added in there. And, you can probably add health care as a tax as well.

Legal tax avoidance is legal. I hate when people bitch about companies doing legal maneuvers. It is very easy to stop that, apply a tax on gross receipts for all income created in the country.

Washington State does that for example if you have a company operating in their state.




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