金融时报:不要急于对谷歌发气

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2021年10月13日

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不要急于对谷歌发气

对于谷歌近期麻烦缠身的税务问题，有观点称不要先急于迁怒于这家美国公司，而应做出更多努力，以确保跨国公司支付正确的公司税务。

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

spat口角，挑衅[spæt]

tactics策略['tæktɪks]

jurisdiction司法权，审判权

jurisdiction marginal临界的['mɑːdʒɪn(ə)l]

haughty傲慢的['hɔːtɪ]

wholesale批发的['həʊlseɪl]

offshore离岸的['ɒfʃɔː; ɒf'ʃɔː]

prone有…倾向的[prəʊn]

upheaval剧变[ʌp'hiːv(ə)l]

exchequer财源，国库[ɪks'tʃekə; eks]

Don't get mad at Google — get even （732words）

By Jonathan Ford

Whenever Google gets into a spot of bother about how much tax it pays, the US search company comes up with the same response. We cough up what we're required to by law, it says. You want more? Well, you're a democracy; pass some legislation.

The company's chairman Eric Schmidt made just this point three years ago during one of Google's periodic spats about the paltry sums it pays to Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs. “I am rather puzzled by this debate which has been going on in the UK for some time because I view taxes as not optional,” he said.

Google wasn't going to pay tax voluntarily just to appease an aggrieved British public, Mr Schmidt observed. It would pay what its lawyers told it to, and not a penny more.

British governments have tried tweaking the rules to curb the tactics Google and other US tech companies use to reduce their tax liabilities. For instance, the Diverted Profits Tax (or “Google tax”) was introduced to frustrate some of the tricks that annoy the public, notably the shifting of profits offshore through questionable inter-group charges to jurisdictions that attract lower rates of tax.

But it hasn't worked. In spite of the new rules, Google still successfully maintains that all but a sliver of the value that goes to achieving its UK sales arises somewhere else. When the company recently settled with HMRC over its past and future liabilities, the Google tax apparently wasn't even invoked.

And because reforming corporation tax is so difficult, requiring wholesale international agreement, that pretty much exhausts politicians' ammunition when it comes to legal combat. Their only recourse is to cut rates to make avoidance more marginal, while pleading with haughty multinationals for a few more crumbs from the groaning board.

There is, however, one simple measure that might allow the UK to do more than get mad at Google — and actually get even. It wouldn't require a wholesale revision of the existing system. It involves reviving (in a reformed guise) a levy abolished in 1999: Advance Corporation Tax (ACT).

Introduced in 1973 primarily to reform the taxation of dividends, this also addressed a similar problem: high rates of corporation tax had encouraged multinationals — perfectly legally — to shift profits overseas by shuffling activities overseas. It was paid at the rate of 30 per cent on dividends, and could only be offset against corporation tax. Shift too much profit offshore and you either had to cut your dividend or see your rate of tax go up.

The new Advance Corporation Sales Tax (ACST) would be based on a similar principle. Set at a percentage of a company's UK sales, the levy would be offset against its corporation tax payments. ACST could be set at varying levels for different sectors, based on their profitability, and targeted at those — such as web services and retail — that are prone to abuse.

Just as with the original, the beauty would be that ordinary UK taxpaying companies would be unaffected. Only those that shunted profits abroad would be hit.

To see how it would work, take a company like Google, with £4.3bn of UK sales in 2014. Apply ACST at the rate of, say, 4 per cent and it would have to pay £173m. Now if Google declared profits in Britain in line with its 26 per cent global margin, that would give it £1.1bn on which it would pay corporation tax of roughly £220m — more than enough to offset the ACST it had already paid. But if it continued to do what it currently does, squirrelling away profits overseas and stumping up just £30m of corporation tax, £143m of that ACST bill would be unrelieved.

Importantly, the tax-take would be raised without undue upheaval. There would be nothing to stop Google, Amazon or Facebook continuing to arrange their affairs however they liked, so long as they paid the ACST. But the new tax would stop the crazy state of affairs whereby the exchequer in effect subsidises their R&D and pricing strategies — the very mechanisms by which they are pushing their onshore UK competitors steadily to the wall.

There would be wrinkles of course. A low-profit or lossmaking business would need to be able to recover the ACST against a legitimate UK profit and loss account. There would be legal challenges — although the system isn't obviously discriminatory and the old ACT regime was compatible with the Treaty of Rome.

But, anyway, that shouldn't deter politicians from exploring the remedy. Those who play by the rules deserve a level field to play on. Mr Schmidt is right: shaming cannot be the main basis for tax policy. If the UK wants to collect more, it should stop pleading and find a law that works.

请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目：

1.What is the main reason made Google pay tax to US as Mr Schmidt said?

A.to appease an aggrieved British public

B.employee protest

C.professional ethics

D.lawyers told

答案(1)

2.What is the “Google tax” meaning?

A.collective welfare

B.diverted profits tax

C.collective welfare

D.vehicle purchase tax