News France reportedly hitting Google with €1.6 billion tax demand

Should be interesting to see what the main stream media think of this and what politicians and HMRC says about it.

 

Good for them.

 

They're going after Google or Alphabet or whoever it is now for €1.6b... whether they actually get it or anything remotely close is another matter...

 

I still prefer their approach to ours.

 

After calling Google in to account for themselves and laughing at the UK CEO because he didn't know how much he was paid, the politicians have already come out and said that HMRC's demand was absurdly small. Whether anything further will ever come as a result of that statement is another matter entirely.

 

The main stream media will make of it whatever the government tells them, because they control most of it?

The HMRC top brass want sacking, in all honesty.
Will it happen.. NO!

George Osbourne should also be in the firing line for this, it is shameful pandering on behalf of a cash strapped nation.

It will be deflected away with some Savile/BBC scandal probably.

 

Proper order. I doubt Google will end up paying any of it, but good on the French none the less.

I think the reason multi-national companies are allowed to get away so lightly with regard to tax is because they are large employers and can help attract other multi-nationals to your country which are also large employers. So what happens off of the back of this could set a precedent for other countries to start charging proper tax on them as well.

 

This is just a story about lawyers getting a big revenue increase over the next X amount of time it takes to get this settled ;-)

 

I get the impression some political forces in France are trying to push Google to leave France. And maybe if they keep it up long enough it'll work.

 

That largely depends on the outcome imo -

If France asks for €1.6b but get sucked into a long and vocal legal battle, only to eventually get something along the lines of the ~€165m HMRC got out of them, they're going to look pretty stupid...

Similarly, if they ask for €1.6b and Google go 'ok, there you go...', HMRC are going to look pretty stupid...

 

Given that our effort was along the lines of "Hi Google, sorry to be a pain, but we really need to show that you're paying your dues. How much are you comfortable with?", I'm still in favour of their approach, and I'm willing to bet they fare better.

 

Agreed

 

I disagree.

Given that it all likelihood Google broke no laws and just took advantage of loopholes kindly left by our legislators, I think we are better of to just ask nicely if we want anything back.

The French have no legal recourse whatsoever. It's a publicity stunt to hide the incompetence of their legislators. When Google, or some court, shows them the finger, they will turn this whole thing around and blame the big evil corporation to their voters.

I really don't get this whole tax scandal. I "expect" companies to try and pay as little tax as necessary. It's not a charity payment. It's our legislators that are ultimately responsible.

 

Thread Necro! But relevant...

Remember this?

Well...

French court lets Google off the hook for €1.3 billion tax bill

So as i suspected, they didn't get even remotely close to the €1.6b they went after alphabet/google for, in fact they got sweet feck all...

 

At least someone gets their hands on the money, what's Ireland's corporate tax rate these days.

 

We take a dodge ball approach to corporation tax. They throw it at us and we jump out of the way.