Korea Plans To Tax Google, Apple and Amazon (koreatimes.co.kr) 72
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Korea Times: The government will move quickly to impose taxes on Google, Apple, Amazon and other global IT companies. This follows policymakers and lawmakers paying greater attention to growing criticism that the firms earn billions of dollars in sales here annually but pay no taxes. Naver, Kakao and other domestic companies have been complaining for years about "an uneven playing field," arguing their foreign rivals should pay corporate income tax on the revenue they generate in Korea. Under the law, the government is unable to tax global companies as it is not mandatory for them to disclose their sales and operating profit here. The Corporate Tax Act stipulates that global companies must pay taxes when they have fixed places of business in Korea. This law has provided global companies with an excuse to avoid taxes while they expand their businesses rapidly here as their bases are established in other countries such as the United States, China and Ireland. Ahn Jeong-sang, a policy advisor to the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, said: "Under the current law, preliminary or ancillary places of business are not regarded as global companies' offices in Korea, and this has played a role in their tax avoidance. Considering the characteristics of the digital economy, the concept of fixed places of business needs to be expanded so that the government can secure authority to impose taxes on them."
apple will soon open up in NK! (Score:2)
apple will soon open up in NK!
Re: It's a republic. (Score:3, Informative)
Foreign companies might be able to offer artificially low prices due to not having to pay taxes.
Re: It's a republic. (Score:5, Informative)
You clearly don't understand what's going on, so I'm trying to dumb this down to the point you'll get it. Korea is telling companies they need to pay taxes on money they make in Korea, like MANY other countries (including the US) already do....
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If that's the issue then you don't get it either.
They go to Ireland and do pay taxes there. It's much lower taxes because Ireland has lower corp taxes.
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And?
God handed down a rule that says that if you pay taxes in Ireland on income that you earn in another country that there shall be no other taxes upon it?
South Korea has opted out of playing that game.
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A nations own brands have to pay tax.
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And countries operating in Korea do so through a subsidiary whose own country is ... take a guess ... Korea.
VAT SchmeeAT. That's nothing to do with this issue at all. For one thing, companies collect it, they don't pay it.
Korea Plans To Tax Who, Exactly? (Score:2)
Korea Plans To Tax Google, Apple and Amazon
No, sorry. That is incorrect.
Korea plans on taxing Koreans *via* Google, Apple, and Amazon.
They will simply up their prices to Koreans by the amount of the tax plus enough to cover their administrative costs. Relatively few Koreans who buy or use those corporations' products and/or services now will stop buying if the prices go up, unless prices double or triple. They'll simply have less to spend domestically. Koreans who buy iPhones now will still buy iPhones even if the price goes up as it's a status th
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Just curious, for google and other IT companies, what US product is cheaper for Koreans than Korean made product?
finally (Score:4, Insightful)
finally Samsung exerts political power over their smartphone rival Apple
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Not as hard as you think.
Here in NZ Google & Facebook are now booking contracts in the NZ tax jurisdiction rather than via Singapore as was done previously. This has been due to increasing comment by politicians, NZ businesses and consumers of Google, for example, having NZ$12M in revenue and paying NZ$365K in tax.
Also we now pay GST (our local VAT equivalent) on purchases from Steam.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/bus... [nzherald.co.nz]
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Corporations don't pay taxes ! (Score:2)
Yep.
Now if all the corporations could pay their shares of taxes globally, it would help.
Apple,
Siemens,
Ford,
Samsung,
etcetcetc...
They pay nearly zero taxes in many many countries by using a lot of tax loopholes and by artificially booking the profits in the countries where they aren't taxed, which is totally wrong.
Good for Korea (Score:2)
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Well, if nothing else, they have Street View in South Korea [goo.gl], so there's that, but they also benefit from well-maintained public streets every time a ground courier delivers a Google-branded device, like a Chromecast or smart speaker, to a customer in South Korea. I'm sure we could dig up more possibilities if we gave it some serious thought.
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Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
No, it's worse. Undesirable speech is now "Russian trolls attacking our democracy."
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every time a ground courier delivers a Google-branded device,
Doesn't Google pay the courier? So the courier already paid for the cost of the roads. Or the couriers delivering Google products somehow immune from gasoline taxes, sales taxes on their equipment, etc.? How are you making the leap from "Google pays someone for something" to "Google should pay more than others who pay for the same thing"?
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The courier gets free gas from Korea for google branded products along with a free car with spikes for wheels to maximize the damage to Korean roads.
Honestly though, this is a stupid move for Korea to do while Trump is fighting tariffs and taxes and the like. Unless they are interested in joining the north and are trying to antagonize us so that we leave?
At first this I thought this was for N Korea (Score:1)
US needs to start taxing them (Score:4, Insightful)
No more loopholes to avoid paying. If the revenue was from money gained from sales in the US, then they need to pay US tax accordingly.
Re:US needs to start taxing them (Score:5, Insightful)
Civil war (Score:2)
Starting a civil war is probably not the best way to resolve tax issues.
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No more loopholes to avoid paying. If the revenue was from money gained from sales in the US, then they need to pay US tax accordingly.
Agreed, they should pay US sales tax. If a company has no physical presence in the US, why should they pay US corporate tax on top of that?
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Because the world is our oyster /joking
The loophole is self-inflicted (Score:3)
If you think about it, they're the same thing. You pay $100, the company gets to keep $80, the government gets $
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The problem is, a lot of goods are today consumed by companies, not individuals.
And these aren't taxed by the VAT system.
Also, VAT rates differ widely by country, and which country's tax apply.
Greedy government always wants it's "cut" (Score:5, Funny)
Always. Hell hath no fury like government denied it's cut.
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Everybody wants a cut. Governments just happen to have to the power to get it.
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Greedy government always wants it's "cut"
Yeah those fucking roads should pay for themselves.
I can't believe how greedy and selfish people are expecting everyone to contribute to. Disgusting.
Local taxes (Score:2)
What's the norm here amongst other nations? I thought Europe taxed global companies on sales via VAT. Does SK not have a sales tax?
The US taxes foreign corporations on income they derive "regularly" from operations in the US. So that also would appear to be normal. I'm honestly shocked SK didn't do this previously.
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Let me try to take this seriously.
So if I sell stuff to buyers in SK on my own website hosted in California, I have to pay corp income tax to the US, California and SK? Even if I ship it via UPS? Doesn't UPS already pay for the delivery?
Ok, let's assume there is a payment processor in SK, and they do pay corp income tax on the profit they make from administering currency conversions and forwarding customer info to me and the currency (after it's been converted into dollars), it's still the case that every
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Re:Local taxes (Score:4, Interesting)
Europe and south korea apply VAT to both domestic and international companies products...
Domestic companies then pay further corporation taxes on their profits, while international companies do not.
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Might be a bit nit-picky, but a VAT/sales tax doesn't tax companies; in fact, companies are more or less exempt from it because they can reclaim the tax on everything they can book as a cost necessary for creating their product.
If a government increases its VAT rate, a company doesn't make any less profit from a sale (only the number of sales might drop due to customers potentially prioritizing their spending differently after literally everything will have increased in price over night).
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What's the norm here amongst other nations? I thought Europe taxed global companies on sales via VAT. Does SK not have a sales tax?
The big companies thoroughly abused that too. For example, some conutries have a low VAT rate. So, google would have a tone of "not sales" staff in (e.g. London) who "didn't sell" anything, merely prepped the client for a sale by doing, say, 100% of the work required for the sale. The sale itself would then be booked through a country with a low VAT rate.
The US taxes foreign co
Cue (Score:2)
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Somalia requires intellectual giants like you as citizens/ inhabitants.