AltaRed wrote: ↑09 Sep 2017 23:10
soldToSoon wrote: ↑09 Sep 2017 11:26
Even more, all the big tech monopolies make billions in sales in Canada. How much tax do you think Apple pays to Canada? ZERO. How much tax does Google pay to Canada? ZERO. How much tax does Microsoft pay to Canada. ZERO. How much does Facebook pay to Canada. ZERO. How about everyone's favorite Starbucks. ZERO. Thanks to double dutch Sanwich Irish. How about Amazon?
I think you are mistaken where multi-nationals have corpoate entities in Canada. Every incorporated subsidiary pays income taxes on income generated in Canada. I worked for a subsidiary of a multi-national and substantial income taxes were paid. There were also withholding tax on dividends re-patriated back to the mother ship, i.e. the mother ship holds the majority or all of the shares of its subsidiary in Canada. The subsidiary is a corporation in its own right and the typical way cash comes back to the mother ship is via dividends on those shareholdings.
Obviously, there are a variety of business structures so each would be handled a bit differently....but profits do not go ex-Canada without being taxed.
This is the problem. This is how it should be. How do you think Google, MSFT, Starbucks, FB and others have amassed such massive war chest of 100s of billions of dollars?
Please do a search on
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dou ... ndwich.asp
These schemes are way beyond the intellect of average or even sophisticated CRA people. They probably don't even know what's going on.
Transfer pricing is a contentious issue mostly, but in case of most of these companies, it's an art form.
Look at what Starbucks pay to the UK:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... ion-pounds
Why do you think Canada is any different? Because these guys like Canada eh?
If you think Apple sells let's say $10 billion of products in Canada, does it pay any corporate tax here? No Chance.
How much do you think Google pays on well over billion in revenue it collects in Canada? ZERO.
Heck, Google doesn't even collect GST for ad sales here and I've been a customer of Google for a long time.
Same thing with Facebook. You can try these by creating a simple account and spending $10 to see if my statements are correct.
Kijji (an eBay company) used to do the same thing until a little while ago and then they started collecting GST.
Linkedin and a whole bunch of companies are based in the Netherlands. If you ever post an ad on LInkedIn, it will be billed from LinkedIn BV based in the Netherlands.
This is the behavior of these companies worldwide. If you think they all Love Canada, then perhaps they are playing like little good boys and gals and sending their weekly remittances to the CRA. Instead, all these guys are accumulating tens of billions of dollars every year in jurisdictions that are outside their native areas.
You won't hear anything about this from anyone in academia or government, because they are too busy foisting a class warfare between doctors and nurses, drycleaner and their customers and so forth.
I'll be very happy to be corrected if someone shows that these companies are indeed paying their taxes here.