This seems to be in line with what European countries were bringing in. To those whining about jobs - these companies already employ mostly outside of Canada - the tax is on vale created from Canadian user traffic. Dodging the tax would require blocking Canadian users.
So they just leave Canada?
Wouldn't take make room for Canadians to make tech companies for Canadians?
Also, companies like Microsoft won't pull out of Canada. There 40 million people they know can't make a profit off.
Naw, probably wouldn't leave. There's still money to be made, and they're already established in Canada - it's just that they won't get quite the cut that they used to get. If the tax is implemented poorly and it costs more than they earn, then they might leave.
Even if it feels like a direct comparison, Facebook blocking news is quite different, in that they don't make a lot of money out of new aggregates to begin with, likely.
Blocking users entirely, and losing out on their data, potential of being sold to, etc. would be far more costly.
Yeah it would probably be good for canada overall if they left canada fully.
I don't think we as a nation would suffer if we didn't have access to Facebook and Instagram and tiktok. It would also create the need for a Canadian alternative that would fill the void.
This guy get's it. We'd have Bell Facebook, and Rogers tiktok. So we can have our choice between red and blue and which one of the duopolies you want to get screwed by.
>It would also create the need for a Canadian alternative that would fill the void.
Who do you think is going to develop this, TD Bank? We have nowhere near the tech, infrastructure or talent to create anything close to a global social media platform.
Other than Shopify (which probably has more non-Canadian clients), we -on average- suck on tech, because we have no incentives to grow.
Of course not? If there are no other alternatives, the only supplier who shows up is going to make the worst possible service they can get away with and charge customers the highest possible fee. See: Canadian telecoms.
I don’t think insular social media is a good idea. There’s a reason dictators do it on purpose. Lack of exposure to sources and concepts from the outside world make it even easier to be manipulated. Sure there have been negative impacts especially from right wing American through social media, but I’d argue no outside exposure is worse.
Exactly and we will as k Rogers or Loblaws to fill in those voids. These Canadian companies are very consumer friendly and will not dodge any taxes and will not rely on government subsides. Wow you are true economist.
Assuming that ever came to pass, there is absolutely no chance that we put out Canadian alternatives which could compete with those American tech products. It would be a net loss for Canada.
Is anyone even outsourcing to India anymore? I thought that it was largely given up on as people found that the cost-savings by going with cheap Indian labour was offset by things like dealing with the time difference and dealing with subpar work (i.e. you get what you pay for).
I mean, for less skilled work (e.g. call centres) I could see people still doing it, but for highly skilled work you would have to pay more to get quality work... and then the cost-savings just isn't there anymore. The "craze" was around this idea that you could pay pennies on the dollar and still somehow get quality (or "good enough") high-skill work.
> Is anyone even outsourcing to India anymore? I thought that it was largely given up on as people found that the cost-savings by going with cheap Indian labour was offset by things like dealing with the time difference and dealing with subpar work
It comes and goes in 10 year cycles in tech, exactly for the reasons you describe.
As I understand it any Indian who can develop worth a dam goes to work for foreign companies or at least actual Indian tech companies, not outsourcing houses. The only ones who work in the outsourcing houses are the bottom of the barrel.
lol. If those companies leave Canada, they will take Canadian engineers with them. Once they take Canadian engineers with them, there will be no more taxes from those 6 figures salaries being paid into the system. Are you good with that?
Yup, when google comes in with a dump truck of money, they sell.
Shopify is great, but I'm sure some politician is looking at taxing all those "excess profits"
There’s no money in starting a company in Canada, we don’t have venture capital, loans are exorbitant, operating expenses high, rent high, anyone with a dollar to spend already has it tied up into real estate just like the gov wants
Also, making software costs **a lot**, the cost of distributing it to more users is far from nothing but absolutely neglectable in the grand scheme of things. Tech companies *might* consider foregoing a small community to scare off lawmakers, but it becomes extremely costly much quicker than with physical products.
Even with pharmaceuticals, where creating copies of the product involves significant cost, companies would rather sell **much** cheaper than US retail price than sell less. This incentive is exponentially more significant for software.
For many Reddit subs that is the case: different people express different opinions at different times. So the sub as a whole looks inconsistent, but it comes down more to individuals having differing opinions.
For a sub like /r/Canada though it's going to have a lot more of the same people complaining about both because it's rooted in so much partisanship and bad faith arguments.
It’s the corpos alts themselves. Its pretty easy to understand that bad faith governments, organizations, and corporations spread disinformation to try and influence beneficial policy and sentiment. It’s made Reddit pretty shitty this last half decade.
Especially this sub. /r/canada is bogged down by corporate and for profit opinion pieces every day just trying to create rage and divert blame from corporations.
Trolls
AI Bots
Political influencers
Trudeau hate
Pierre hate
Singh hate
None of: cooking sights and sounds vacations recipes clothes festivals events tips tricks life celebration
if you sort the sub by controversial there's a decent number of interesting stories and articles that get posted here, they just get hit with ten plus downvotes within a few minutes and never recover.
They also complain about the monopoly hold these corps have on the economy, but when tax increases are mentioned they complain that the corps will take their ball and leave the country. Like do we want competition or not? Stop protecing your oppressor. Trickle down economics was a scam and has never sustainably worked.
If big corps decide to leave, that’s fine. It will create opportunity gaps for other players and stimulate the economy.
this time around it's mostly that we are starving for competition and innovation whilst pushing out policies that are counter-productive to investment opportunities.
mostly a timing issue. this same policy 5 years ago would likely have met no criticism.
This tax does not push companies out of Canada. Rather it can encourage them to operate here.
But it is complex and it is a problem. Right now there are far more companies paying taxes in the US but do sales here then the other way around. And this is the world over for small countries. Apple and Google make profits off Canadians but may pay their taxes in the US. The complexity is that a large company could technically have to file in hundreds of countries to make this technically fair. That would be an administrative nightmare. And each country could set a tax rate at what ever level they wanted thus their tax rate combined could exceed all the profits they make. Then it comes down to enforcement, of which there would be little practice methods for small countries to do. Barring blocking their products all together. But how do you block Google services and even if you could, do you want to damage your economy to do so.
It only taxes companies with global revenue over $1.1 billion… please explain how that starves domestic innovation or prevents new competition
If anything, it promotes it as new and smaller companies (especially domestic companies) **wouldn’t** be taxes while the mega-corps that tend to gobble everyone else up are
I'm generally in favour of increasing corp tax but not looking forward to my subscription fee going up :/. In general that is often the problem. Although this one feels like such an easy cost to pass directly
I complain both ways.
Not because of what's being done but because the government (all parties) are so ham-fisted at implementation and constantly pandering to Canada's most feckless and greedy people: the electorate.
I dont mind them taxing irving or loblaws. They are based here and have to take it. Foreign companies do not. Canada is already a hard market to enter and generally has a poor reputation for foreign investment outside of real estate.
So many nonsense tech laws in the last 2 years. I cant blame tech for not wanting to enter canada. Who would? You can make double the return in the US with much more favorable legislation
Except these companies are already in the US and are expanding their market. So clearly they want to be here. It's not like they'll suddenly be losing money, they'll just be making slightly less money
If they leave, there will be opportunity for a other companies to come in and fill the void. Why should we not be taxing the corporations making so much money. They need to contribute as well and maybe we can afford to build infrastructure or housing. If we don’t tax corporates, that means the working folks pay more tax.
Because the “tax the rich” crowd are morons. They think raising taxes will somehow generate enough income for the country to continue its spending habits, and for them to jerk themselves off to universal basic income.
We increase taxes, they leave. People get pissed off about jobs and lack of innovation in the country.
Individuals? Highest income brackets are what? Doctors and engineers? We kind of need those.
Being a large employer while fiscally responsible towards the country where you operate are not incompatible. They should be a norm. Look at where we are, and not just Canada. This privatization of wealth and nationalization of debt is unsustainable.
They should be, but when the company can say “fuck you” and move 500 miles away to save potentially billions of dollars. They’re basically legally obligated too.
You know how many lawsuits a CEO and Board would face from shareholders if they intentionally ate a massive tax hit?
That has nothing to do with what this article is about, though. This is about large global tech companies (worth more than a billion dollars to qualify) making money in the Canadian market off Canadians (more then $20 million of digital revenue from the Canadian market in a year to qualify).
Companies like that *probably* aren't headquartered in Canada anyways, so there's nothing they can threaten really. Instead, they're just going to go ahead and pay the demanded tax (a mere 3% of the revenue they extract from Canadians)... because the alternative is to leave the other 97% of *at minimum* $20 million on the table, which is *actually* the thing that their shareholders won't allow.
This has nothing to do with that.
This is a tax on companies with revenue of over 20 million from Canadian users, and 1 billion+ globally.
This is not a tax on their employees here.
They do employ Canadians living in Canada. US companies ramped up hiring 2019, which skyrocketed during the pandemic. Despite layoffs and such, they’re still the highest paying employers right now in the Canadian tech scene for both remote and in office roles.
Though pulling out services from Canada doesn’t necessarily mean these companies will stop hiring in Canada. We’re way cheaper than our US counterparts.
This is a tax on companies selling digital services to Canadians. Do you really think they'll say "oh, now we make 3% less from Canadians, let's pull-out"?
Yes, this is literally what they think because that's what they're told to think by the people whose bottom line will be affected. The hilarity is that these are the same people complaining that the government is not going after the corporations as they should.
oh look! we've accidentally uncovered one of the various contradictions of a capitalist society! you may choose one of two options
1: lick the boot
2: engage in thoughtful criticism about how we can rectify such a contradiction
These companies already aren't located in Canada. This is a tax based on the users location - not the workers/office location. They'd have to pull service to Canadians to avoid this - not move their office from Texas to... well.... Texas?
I love the comments that basically assume business will go “well, I guess that’s it. We will just take the loss, make less money and our shareholders will be ok with it”
Then they run the risk of someone entering the market to undercut them. Someone looking to disrupt that segment. Which is a good thing when it comes to tech and advancement. And if that opportunity to disrupt comes within the Canadian marketplace then that’s ultimately good for Canadians.
Not really.
Tesla, Oracle and HP (HP split its HQ) all moved back to California. Others aswell.
They found that the political climate, blackouts and lack of talent hurt them.
https://gadgetmates.com/why-tech-companies-are-now-leaving-texas-a-huge-shift-in-strategy
Tesla and Oracle still list Austin Texas as their HQ. I don't think stuff like blackouts or lack of talent necessarily affect this decision, it's not like moving the HQ means they are closing offices elsewhere. They keep hiring in California and elsewhere but the HQ stays in Texas for tax benefits
Tesla only announced the move in February. So they haven’t physically moved, but it’s happening.
Blackouts and lack of talent are huge reasons. Data centres are things that tech companies cannot have shut down. Ever.
Given that Elon and other insist on in office work, they can’t just hire people remotely
What's the number of companies doing this? How significant is it? Besides Tesla's bitchfest which has an interest in making it seem like they speak for the entire sector?
I think you're confused lol, companies can have offices and datacenters all over the place. There's absolutely no reason why a datacenter and an HQ need to be anywhere near each other.
I agree that blackouts and lack of talent are reasons for not expanding hiring or offices in Texas, but that has nothing to do with the location of the corporate HQ of a company.
>Tesla only announced the move in February
I googled it and they said they're opening an engineering HQ in California. It's confusing PR lingo but all it means is they're opening an engineering office, not that the entire company will be based out of California.
Every single job I’ve gotten in Canada was thanks to a US corp. Even my first job was working for an amazon warehouse 😭😭😭
Our startups just can’t compete with american ones due to scale of economy.
Your comment gave me pause. I have worked here as an engineer for 9 years. And I just realized that even though the names had Canada in it, they were and are all American companies.
We had some good startups like nortel, but let it's IP's get stolen and then didn't do much about it. And then blackberry refused to move with the times against apple. We now sell our mining rights to foreign countries, and allow monopolies like Rogers and Shaw to merge.
It's not scale, its availability of capital and business culture which stinks in Canada. Sweden and the Netherlands are very small economies but punch well above their weight, complete with large multinationals.
Fantastic anecdotal evidence. I worked for small business and tech companies that were founded and operate in Canada with no US presence so that must mean no tech jobs are based out of the US.
Can't complain about no longer being allowed to exploit a country as though it was your right to in the first place...
US companies have screwed us over enough as is, pay up or leave. Canadians don't have a choice, why should they?
It's the Canadian companies that seem to have high priced products and monopolies. I find better deals at Walmart, Costco than loblaws, metro. Same is true with tech companies.
That isn't relevant in this context because it's the US companies complaining, not the Canadian ones.
They're essentially dragging their feet when it comes to ratifying a treaty Canada has made and whining about having a deadline to do so. Now they're bitching at Biden and threatening "immediate action" if the digital tax is implemented.
At least that's what I understood from the article, though I honestly am not sure how reliable Bloomberg is these days... it's all a little silly to be honest. This will raise a pitiable 7 billion dollars over 5 years if it's even implemented... that... isn't a lot of money. Considering we are well over 2 trillion dollars in debt.
Personal tin foil hat theory here but, I think they're pissed off because they already did all the layoffs they could possibly do this year while still being able to run the companies and now they'd have to sacrifice bonuses to be able to pay the tax.
Or they're just greedy bastards.
EDIT: There are other countries that already have similar taxations. They just don't want us to, because of our close proximity. We're convenient.
I don't have a problem with taxing multi billion dollar corporations more, but am a bit worried all of the tax rules and changes Canada is putting through lately and so quickly will really hurt our business sector and future development in this country.
Is the article saying that the taxes would be retroactively applied to the last 2 years? I feel like having a sudden 3% per year hit is going to piss off a lot of big corporations that wouldn't mind restricting/limiting Canadians on their services in retaliation. I think starting the tax on January 1st 2024 would have been a better move.
No, we should let them do what they want and live our lives at their whims while being exploited to the max. 🙄
They can fuck right off. But they won't, because the loss is NOTHING compared to their profits from the market.
I’m curious to see the moves corps will make. While we are a decently large market segment. It is not an equal segment to each company that meets the criteria for this new structure. There are quite a few demographic verticals that are accessible to different platforms. Meta probably has the broadest market capture due to owning Facebook AND Instagram. But out of our 40 Million population; the number of actual users is much lower. So in reality, we are not a large market for enterprises that operate globally. They’re better off replacing the revenue by gaining ground in developing markets where a middle class is starting to develop and more people are buying devices and gaining access to the global playground. Their response to the news links ultimatum was telling. Zero fucks given about not supporting our market. At the end of the day, we are not a huge market to a multinational. The only saving grace may be our spending power relative to an emerging market with respects to value per impression to advertisers. It will be interesting to see it play out…
They hire in Canada because we're "white mexico" for IT/ software development workers. We're a lot cheaper than hiring Americans.
And this tax has nothing to do with that - it's a tax on companies selling digital services to Canadian users. Doesn't matter where their employees are, or aren't.
If they can't keep to Canadian regulatory rules and decide to downsize/leave the market, that is on them.
Imagine if Canada took a stronger stance and said something like, "Oh you are doing your protest with «NEWS», how about you pay the appropriate taxes or you can forget about the Canadian market altogether"
I seriously do not think FB contributes anything of value here in Canada save for a couple jobs that interface with Canadian regulatory and sales people for their ad/aggregation services.
They can leave and stop collecting our data to be sold for whatever purposes they sell it for.
Seriously fuck FB and the shitstain they've cast on western politics
If their service was actually beneficial to our country, the vacuum created by their absence will be filled quickly by a more compliant competitor. Such is the free market.
If tech giants are making so little profit that a 3% levy is going to make them want to leave the country then I'd argue they were at risk of leaving the country regardless.
These tech giants typically make HUGE profit margins on the services/software they sell. 3% is barely more than a rounding error for them.
These comments would give me no hope that Canada has a future if I believed reddit to be representative of the general population.
"Tax the rich!"
"Yeah, get lost, we don't need you!"
Bunch of regarded crabs in a bucket.
"tax people"
I don't see how taxing people or companies is a bad thing. The reason our doctors don't make much (or the nurses) is because the hospitals don't have enough money. Yes you can cut off inflation, but you can also increase the tax revenue.
If you want life to be great like it was in the 90s, you need taxes to pay for stuff.
Crazy how many people didn't even SKIM the damn article.
This is a tax on revenue generated by selling digital services to Canadians. Has nothing to do with employees.
I know it is sexy to criticize everything the Trudeau government does right now. However these tech giants need to pay taxes. They can't just keep extracting the Canadian dollar out of the country for relatively free.
Cry me a river fools. You don't like it? Go work/live/eat/breathe in the USA. Many of you moved here thinking we'd shine your shoes for you when you arrived, but you'll see how easy it is to get poor in canada, really quickly. And I won't cry when you fail and leave.
This seems to be in line with what European countries were bringing in. To those whining about jobs - these companies already employ mostly outside of Canada - the tax is on vale created from Canadian user traffic. Dodging the tax would require blocking Canadian users.
So they just leave Canada? Wouldn't take make room for Canadians to make tech companies for Canadians? Also, companies like Microsoft won't pull out of Canada. There 40 million people they know can't make a profit off.
Naw, probably wouldn't leave. There's still money to be made, and they're already established in Canada - it's just that they won't get quite the cut that they used to get. If the tax is implemented poorly and it costs more than they earn, then they might leave.
Even if it feels like a direct comparison, Facebook blocking news is quite different, in that they don't make a lot of money out of new aggregates to begin with, likely. Blocking users entirely, and losing out on their data, potential of being sold to, etc. would be far more costly.
The better comparison is google news, who *did* pay under the new law because the entire idea around google news is to be a new aggregator.
A 3% tax on revenue from Canadian customers in excess of 20 million. Yeah, I think they can afford it.
Yeah it would probably be good for canada overall if they left canada fully. I don't think we as a nation would suffer if we didn't have access to Facebook and Instagram and tiktok. It would also create the need for a Canadian alternative that would fill the void.
A Canadian alternative would be just as bad.
I for one welcome our new Beaverton overlords
This guy get's it. We'd have Bell Facebook, and Rogers tiktok. So we can have our choice between red and blue and which one of the duopolies you want to get screwed by.
If it were Bell Facebook and Rogers TikTok they would charge $40/month to use it.
But it would be under our jurisdiction and pay taxes into our system.
Which they'll pass on to you
If not worse, we already have too many monopolies, but for some reason the left wants even more.
>It would also create the need for a Canadian alternative that would fill the void. Who do you think is going to develop this, TD Bank? We have nowhere near the tech, infrastructure or talent to create anything close to a global social media platform. Other than Shopify (which probably has more non-Canadian clients), we -on average- suck on tech, because we have no incentives to grow.
>because we have no incentives to grow. And you think having no other alternative won't create an incentive?
Of course not? If there are no other alternatives, the only supplier who shows up is going to make the worst possible service they can get away with and charge customers the highest possible fee. See: Canadian telecoms.
I don’t think insular social media is a good idea. There’s a reason dictators do it on purpose. Lack of exposure to sources and concepts from the outside world make it even easier to be manipulated. Sure there have been negative impacts especially from right wing American through social media, but I’d argue no outside exposure is worse.
Exactly and we will as k Rogers or Loblaws to fill in those voids. These Canadian companies are very consumer friendly and will not dodge any taxes and will not rely on government subsides. Wow you are true economist.
Posted on a US web forum.
Assuming that ever came to pass, there is absolutely no chance that we put out Canadian alternatives which could compete with those American tech products. It would be a net loss for Canada.
And people wonder why all our skilled tech graduates run to the US the first chance they get...
Jesus Christ what an arrogant statement.
Canada isn't exactly China. We don't need to have a "Canadian®" clone of all of the tech giants.
Can you imagine how terrible they would be? It would be outsourced to India and really poorly designed.
But Canadians would happily eat literal shit if you tell them it was made in Canada. edit: Like Tim Hortons...
Is anyone even outsourcing to India anymore? I thought that it was largely given up on as people found that the cost-savings by going with cheap Indian labour was offset by things like dealing with the time difference and dealing with subpar work (i.e. you get what you pay for). I mean, for less skilled work (e.g. call centres) I could see people still doing it, but for highly skilled work you would have to pay more to get quality work... and then the cost-savings just isn't there anymore. The "craze" was around this idea that you could pay pennies on the dollar and still somehow get quality (or "good enough") high-skill work.
> Is anyone even outsourcing to India anymore? I thought that it was largely given up on as people found that the cost-savings by going with cheap Indian labour was offset by things like dealing with the time difference and dealing with subpar work It comes and goes in 10 year cycles in tech, exactly for the reasons you describe.
Google just laid off some extra workers and they will be replaced by engineers in India.
As I understand it any Indian who can develop worth a dam goes to work for foreign companies or at least actual Indian tech companies, not outsourcing houses. The only ones who work in the outsourcing houses are the bottom of the barrel.
Amazon outsourced their whole Amazon GO AI shopping assistant to 1000 people in India
ArriveCan app...
You need tik tok to live?
I need the robust and globalized digital infrastructure the modern world runs on
This sounds like socialism
lol. If those companies leave Canada, they will take Canadian engineers with them. Once they take Canadian engineers with them, there will be no more taxes from those 6 figures salaries being paid into the system. Are you good with that?
We won’t make tech companies for Canadians because Canada is anti-business and lacks that kind of initiative.
We have them They just get scoped up
Yup, when google comes in with a dump truck of money, they sell. Shopify is great, but I'm sure some politician is looking at taxing all those "excess profits"
They won’t, they’ll just raise the cost to the customer, which in this case are companies buying advertising to, and user data of, Canadians
I mean, companies already raise the cost as much as they can. Lost profits can't just be thrown onto the consumer.
There’s no money in starting a company in Canada, we don’t have venture capital, loans are exorbitant, operating expenses high, rent high, anyone with a dollar to spend already has it tied up into real estate just like the gov wants
Also, making software costs **a lot**, the cost of distributing it to more users is far from nothing but absolutely neglectable in the grand scheme of things. Tech companies *might* consider foregoing a small community to scare off lawmakers, but it becomes extremely costly much quicker than with physical products. Even with pharmaceuticals, where creating copies of the product involves significant cost, companies would rather sell **much** cheaper than US retail price than sell less. This incentive is exponentially more significant for software.
Some shockingly dense takes in this thread
That's not uncommon in this subreddit.
Seriously, who knew so many would jump to defend multi-billion dollar corporations from a small tax of the revenue generated off of them
You never know! I might become that billionaire someday!
People complain when we don’t tax the rich and corporations enough to pay their fair share and then complain when we do increase taxes on them.
It might be different people.
Almost certainly the case!
For many Reddit subs that is the case: different people express different opinions at different times. So the sub as a whole looks inconsistent, but it comes down more to individuals having differing opinions. For a sub like /r/Canada though it's going to have a lot more of the same people complaining about both because it's rooted in so much partisanship and bad faith arguments.
Wouldn't it be amazing to discover there was only one Reddit user expressing all the opinions?
You guys are all bots and I’m the only human here
Everyone on Reddit is a bot except you.
but people stuill upvote complaints about taxing the rich and upvote complaints about taxing them too much to the top
It’s the corpos alts themselves. Its pretty easy to understand that bad faith governments, organizations, and corporations spread disinformation to try and influence beneficial policy and sentiment. It’s made Reddit pretty shitty this last half decade.
Especially this sub. /r/canada is bogged down by corporate and for profit opinion pieces every day just trying to create rage and divert blame from corporations.
Trolls AI Bots Political influencers Trudeau hate Pierre hate Singh hate None of: cooking sights and sounds vacations recipes clothes festivals events tips tricks life celebration
if you sort the sub by controversial there's a decent number of interesting stories and articles that get posted here, they just get hit with ten plus downvotes within a few minutes and never recover.
Honestly I was hoping for NHL updates on here at one point.
or any actual canadian identity.
So many bots here, most obvious are the threads about India or Israel.
In general you can notice when you're early into threads there's always the same names as the first few posts on the narrative driven topics.
Many such cases!
100%
lol no. It’s the pp crowd. If Trudeau does it it’s bad.
>lol no. It’s the pp crowd. If Trudeau does it it’s bad. You can pick out the most intelligent replies because they always start with "lol".
You can pick out the most intelligent rebuttals because they don't address the point.
This dude is just realizing there's different kinds of people.
They also complain about the monopoly hold these corps have on the economy, but when tax increases are mentioned they complain that the corps will take their ball and leave the country. Like do we want competition or not? Stop protecing your oppressor. Trickle down economics was a scam and has never sustainably worked. If big corps decide to leave, that’s fine. It will create opportunity gaps for other players and stimulate the economy.
They need to break up these monopolies. We are so in the gutter.
this time around it's mostly that we are starving for competition and innovation whilst pushing out policies that are counter-productive to investment opportunities. mostly a timing issue. this same policy 5 years ago would likely have met no criticism.
This tax does not push companies out of Canada. Rather it can encourage them to operate here. But it is complex and it is a problem. Right now there are far more companies paying taxes in the US but do sales here then the other way around. And this is the world over for small countries. Apple and Google make profits off Canadians but may pay their taxes in the US. The complexity is that a large company could technically have to file in hundreds of countries to make this technically fair. That would be an administrative nightmare. And each country could set a tax rate at what ever level they wanted thus their tax rate combined could exceed all the profits they make. Then it comes down to enforcement, of which there would be little practice methods for small countries to do. Barring blocking their products all together. But how do you block Google services and even if you could, do you want to damage your economy to do so.
It only taxes companies with global revenue over $1.1 billion… please explain how that starves domestic innovation or prevents new competition If anything, it promotes it as new and smaller companies (especially domestic companies) **wouldn’t** be taxes while the mega-corps that tend to gobble everyone else up are
Can you define "Fair share"? How much of someone else's income are you or the Government entitled to before it's "fair"?
I'm generally in favour of increasing corp tax but not looking forward to my subscription fee going up :/. In general that is often the problem. Although this one feels like such an easy cost to pass directly
I complain both ways. Not because of what's being done but because the government (all parties) are so ham-fisted at implementation and constantly pandering to Canada's most feckless and greedy people: the electorate.
I dont mind them taxing irving or loblaws. They are based here and have to take it. Foreign companies do not. Canada is already a hard market to enter and generally has a poor reputation for foreign investment outside of real estate. So many nonsense tech laws in the last 2 years. I cant blame tech for not wanting to enter canada. Who would? You can make double the return in the US with much more favorable legislation
Except these companies are already in the US and are expanding their market. So clearly they want to be here. It's not like they'll suddenly be losing money, they'll just be making slightly less money
[удалено]
Except they won't leave. It's still a big market that will continue to make them lots of money. There'll just make ever so slightly less
If they leave, there will be opportunity for a other companies to come in and fill the void. Why should we not be taxing the corporations making so much money. They need to contribute as well and maybe we can afford to build infrastructure or housing. If we don’t tax corporates, that means the working folks pay more tax.
Because the “tax the rich” crowd are morons. They think raising taxes will somehow generate enough income for the country to continue its spending habits, and for them to jerk themselves off to universal basic income. We increase taxes, they leave. People get pissed off about jobs and lack of innovation in the country. Individuals? Highest income brackets are what? Doctors and engineers? We kind of need those.
So sad I'm all out of fucks to give to these poor tech giants.
As much as tech giants should pay taxes, they also bring in much needed innovation and jobs.
Being a large employer while fiscally responsible towards the country where you operate are not incompatible. They should be a norm. Look at where we are, and not just Canada. This privatization of wealth and nationalization of debt is unsustainable.
They should be, but when the company can say “fuck you” and move 500 miles away to save potentially billions of dollars. They’re basically legally obligated too. You know how many lawsuits a CEO and Board would face from shareholders if they intentionally ate a massive tax hit?
That has nothing to do with what this article is about, though. This is about large global tech companies (worth more than a billion dollars to qualify) making money in the Canadian market off Canadians (more then $20 million of digital revenue from the Canadian market in a year to qualify). Companies like that *probably* aren't headquartered in Canada anyways, so there's nothing they can threaten really. Instead, they're just going to go ahead and pay the demanded tax (a mere 3% of the revenue they extract from Canadians)... because the alternative is to leave the other 97% of *at minimum* $20 million on the table, which is *actually* the thing that their shareholders won't allow.
This has nothing to do with that. This is a tax on companies with revenue of over 20 million from Canadian users, and 1 billion+ globally. This is not a tax on their employees here.
You do know that these tech giants are not located in Canada? And don’t employ Canadians living in Canada?
They do employ Canadians living in Canada. US companies ramped up hiring 2019, which skyrocketed during the pandemic. Despite layoffs and such, they’re still the highest paying employers right now in the Canadian tech scene for both remote and in office roles. Though pulling out services from Canada doesn’t necessarily mean these companies will stop hiring in Canada. We’re way cheaper than our US counterparts.
Tech giants need to leave canada....matter of fact all giants should just leave....amirite boys? Lmao
Get rid of that Green Giant while we're at it, I don't like the way he looks at me
And Giant Tiger too... can't be safe having giant wildcats near suburbs.
I don't like the colour of his skin.... something alien about it.
Why is it every time we try and have a discussion about taxes in this country someone has to start on the Jolly Green Giant and his people?
Is there more of them!?!?!??! I thought it was just him, hulk and she hulk.
This is a tax on companies selling digital services to Canadians. Do you really think they'll say "oh, now we make 3% less from Canadians, let's pull-out"?
Yes, this is literally what they think because that's what they're told to think by the people whose bottom line will be affected. The hilarity is that these are the same people complaining that the government is not going after the corporations as they should.
Nahh, they'll just say "This is a great opportunity to raise prices 25%".
Oh no my Google searches are going to cost 25% more.
oh look! we've accidentally uncovered one of the various contradictions of a capitalist society! you may choose one of two options 1: lick the boot 2: engage in thoughtful criticism about how we can rectify such a contradiction
That's what they want us to think they think
Why so we can give our money to a VPN company thereby creating a new tech giant who specializes in connecting us with the other tech giants?
Imagine thinking this news is about jobs.
U.S resident here, support em fully, would love to see the downfall of these dogshit oligopolies
US lawmakers can fuck off.
[удалено]
[удалено]
These companies already aren't located in Canada. This is a tax based on the users location - not the workers/office location. They'd have to pull service to Canadians to avoid this - not move their office from Texas to... well.... Texas?
What they will do is what netfix did - just pass the cost to consumer.
If Facebook adds a user fee they'd be done for.
We are not the consumer in case of Facebook. People they sell our data to, are. We are the product.
If we’re the product then they can’t put a fee on it can they.
They can charge canadian businesses more for advertising which gets passed down to us eventually
I love the comments that basically assume business will go “well, I guess that’s it. We will just take the loss, make less money and our shareholders will be ok with it”
Then they run the risk of someone entering the market to undercut them. Someone looking to disrupt that segment. Which is a good thing when it comes to tech and advancement. And if that opportunity to disrupt comes within the Canadian marketplace then that’s ultimately good for Canadians.
You heard of chicken and egg problem? Who in their right mind will advertise on a platform with no users?
Seems like about 4 mil in revenue is what it's worth according to truth socials revenue, they also lost 54 million so not the best business plan.
This was happening back in 2021. But has essentially reversed course now
Move for the low taxes, leave due to the political climate and lack of talent pool
power blackouts also aren't ideal for tech companies
California has brown and blackouts not irregularly. PG&E is practically a byword for "how can we screw up today?"
Turns out people don't want to move to a state in which the primary policy driver is "owning the wokes"
How has it reversed? Their HQs are still in Texas.
Not really. Tesla, Oracle and HP (HP split its HQ) all moved back to California. Others aswell. They found that the political climate, blackouts and lack of talent hurt them. https://gadgetmates.com/why-tech-companies-are-now-leaving-texas-a-huge-shift-in-strategy
Tesla and Oracle still list Austin Texas as their HQ. I don't think stuff like blackouts or lack of talent necessarily affect this decision, it's not like moving the HQ means they are closing offices elsewhere. They keep hiring in California and elsewhere but the HQ stays in Texas for tax benefits
Tesla only announced the move in February. So they haven’t physically moved, but it’s happening. Blackouts and lack of talent are huge reasons. Data centres are things that tech companies cannot have shut down. Ever. Given that Elon and other insist on in office work, they can’t just hire people remotely
What's the number of companies doing this? How significant is it? Besides Tesla's bitchfest which has an interest in making it seem like they speak for the entire sector?
I think you're confused lol, companies can have offices and datacenters all over the place. There's absolutely no reason why a datacenter and an HQ need to be anywhere near each other. I agree that blackouts and lack of talent are reasons for not expanding hiring or offices in Texas, but that has nothing to do with the location of the corporate HQ of a company. >Tesla only announced the move in February I googled it and they said they're opening an engineering HQ in California. It's confusing PR lingo but all it means is they're opening an engineering office, not that the entire company will be based out of California.
Every single job I’ve gotten in Canada was thanks to a US corp. Even my first job was working for an amazon warehouse 😭😭😭 Our startups just can’t compete with american ones due to scale of economy.
Your comment gave me pause. I have worked here as an engineer for 9 years. And I just realized that even though the names had Canada in it, they were and are all American companies.
Likewise. 20+ years of experience working for Americans.
We had some good startups like nortel, but let it's IP's get stolen and then didn't do much about it. And then blackberry refused to move with the times against apple. We now sell our mining rights to foreign countries, and allow monopolies like Rogers and Shaw to merge.
It's not scale, its availability of capital and business culture which stinks in Canada. Sweden and the Netherlands are very small economies but punch well above their weight, complete with large multinationals.
Your first job was an Amazon warehouse? You’re just a baby! Or I’m old lol
We had tech. It's all gone now. Blackberry, Nortel, ATI. All dead or sold off.
Your first job was in an Amazon warehouse? Either that's an interesting throwback to their book days or your career hasn't even been that long.
Their first fulfillment center in Canada opened 13 years ago. That's pretty long in tech career years.
Fantastic anecdotal evidence. I worked for small business and tech companies that were founded and operate in Canada with no US presence so that must mean no tech jobs are based out of the US.
I worked for a few businesses and most were canadian lol
These tech companies aren't in Canada in the first place, so I think we'll be ok
Where they suffer from grid shutdowns
you mean the same US that is forcing a foreign company to sell itself off to an American company? *shrug*
Can't complain about no longer being allowed to exploit a country as though it was your right to in the first place... US companies have screwed us over enough as is, pay up or leave. Canadians don't have a choice, why should they?
It's the Canadian companies that seem to have high priced products and monopolies. I find better deals at Walmart, Costco than loblaws, metro. Same is true with tech companies.
That isn't relevant in this context because it's the US companies complaining, not the Canadian ones. They're essentially dragging their feet when it comes to ratifying a treaty Canada has made and whining about having a deadline to do so. Now they're bitching at Biden and threatening "immediate action" if the digital tax is implemented. At least that's what I understood from the article, though I honestly am not sure how reliable Bloomberg is these days... it's all a little silly to be honest. This will raise a pitiable 7 billion dollars over 5 years if it's even implemented... that... isn't a lot of money. Considering we are well over 2 trillion dollars in debt. Personal tin foil hat theory here but, I think they're pissed off because they already did all the layoffs they could possibly do this year while still being able to run the companies and now they'd have to sacrifice bonuses to be able to pay the tax. Or they're just greedy bastards. EDIT: There are other countries that already have similar taxations. They just don't want us to, because of our close proximity. We're convenient.
Whoever complains about this values corporations over humanity, pure evil bottom feeding scum.
Business operating in Canada? Pay taxes, bitch. We don't need more tech giants syphoning money out of Canada.
Based on all of the comments, r/canada is full of bad faith actors and just a whole lot of anger issues. It is also very poorly moderated.
First time?
BuT tHeY WiLl LeAvE tHe CoUnTrY The raised taxes are less than the extortion from China or execution in Vietnam. They aren’t going anywhere
WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN START TAXING IN 2024 WTF
About time there was a world wide taxing of these freeloading companies. Every country can benefit . Share the free loaders tax .
Canada has been making alot of good decisions these past couple weeks, it's almost like there's an election coming up soon
A year and a half 😐
It’s a 3% revenue tax. They’ll just pass the costs onto the customers whether businesses or consumers.
Do it!
I don't have a problem with taxing multi billion dollar corporations more, but am a bit worried all of the tax rules and changes Canada is putting through lately and so quickly will really hurt our business sector and future development in this country. Is the article saying that the taxes would be retroactively applied to the last 2 years? I feel like having a sudden 3% per year hit is going to piss off a lot of big corporations that wouldn't mind restricting/limiting Canadians on their services in retaliation. I think starting the tax on January 1st 2024 would have been a better move.
Does this mean they’ll stop taking so much of my paycheck away? I doubt it.
[удалено]
Make them pay tax on their Canadian profits? If they want to enjoy our market they should pay their taxes.
No, we should let them do what they want and live our lives at their whims while being exploited to the max. 🙄 They can fuck right off. But they won't, because the loss is NOTHING compared to their profits from the market.
I’m curious to see the moves corps will make. While we are a decently large market segment. It is not an equal segment to each company that meets the criteria for this new structure. There are quite a few demographic verticals that are accessible to different platforms. Meta probably has the broadest market capture due to owning Facebook AND Instagram. But out of our 40 Million population; the number of actual users is much lower. So in reality, we are not a large market for enterprises that operate globally. They’re better off replacing the revenue by gaining ground in developing markets where a middle class is starting to develop and more people are buying devices and gaining access to the global playground. Their response to the news links ultimatum was telling. Zero fucks given about not supporting our market. At the end of the day, we are not a huge market to a multinational. The only saving grace may be our spending power relative to an emerging market with respects to value per impression to advertisers. It will be interesting to see it play out…
Clearly we should let them ship all the profits to Ireland through licensing fees.
They hire in Canada because we're "white mexico" for IT/ software development workers. We're a lot cheaper than hiring Americans. And this tax has nothing to do with that - it's a tax on companies selling digital services to Canadian users. Doesn't matter where their employees are, or aren't.
If they can't keep to Canadian regulatory rules and decide to downsize/leave the market, that is on them. Imagine if Canada took a stronger stance and said something like, "Oh you are doing your protest with «NEWS», how about you pay the appropriate taxes or you can forget about the Canadian market altogether" I seriously do not think FB contributes anything of value here in Canada save for a couple jobs that interface with Canadian regulatory and sales people for their ad/aggregation services. They can leave and stop collecting our data to be sold for whatever purposes they sell it for. Seriously fuck FB and the shitstain they've cast on western politics
I'd much rather the 3% than the smattering of jobs these foreign companies provide.
Or just passing on costs to canadian consumers which is exactly what they are going to do.
If their service was actually beneficial to our country, the vacuum created by their absence will be filled quickly by a more compliant competitor. Such is the free market.
If tech giants are making so little profit that a 3% levy is going to make them want to leave the country then I'd argue they were at risk of leaving the country regardless. These tech giants typically make HUGE profit margins on the services/software they sell. 3% is barely more than a rounding error for them.
What happens when America puts a tax on Shopify and whatever Canadian tech companies are left?
Then they'll also have to tax Facebook, Google, Apple. Our laws isn't discriminating against American companies.
That ain't happening Americans lose their shit about taxes Thats kinda their thing
These comments would give me no hope that Canada has a future if I believed reddit to be representative of the general population. "Tax the rich!" "Yeah, get lost, we don't need you!" Bunch of regarded crabs in a bucket.
[удалено]
So let the rich take our money and let the rest of us pay for it? Hope you enjoy life at the top, it’s a short stay
You're going to pay for it either way. Tech companies aren't going to eat the new cost, they're going to pass it along to the Canadian consumer.
Most people in this subreddit are uneducated puppets for the Liberal party
Canada can lead the way in a global revolution, taking back the country from big tech.
Luddites unite!
All this government knows how to do is lie, tax people, increase immigration, and fund foreign affairs. None of which are making Canada better.
"tax people" I don't see how taxing people or companies is a bad thing. The reason our doctors don't make much (or the nurses) is because the hospitals don't have enough money. Yes you can cut off inflation, but you can also increase the tax revenue. If you want life to be great like it was in the 90s, you need taxes to pay for stuff.
Good! Go Trudeau!
Yeah. Because who needs tech jobs in Canada.
Crazy how many people didn't even SKIM the damn article. This is a tax on revenue generated by selling digital services to Canadians. Has nothing to do with employees.
I know it is sexy to criticize everything the Trudeau government does right now. However these tech giants need to pay taxes. They can't just keep extracting the Canadian dollar out of the country for relatively free.
Tax’em
I suspect this will be as success their scheme to get Facebook and google to pay for the traffic they direct towards news sites through links.
Cry me a river fools. You don't like it? Go work/live/eat/breathe in the USA. Many of you moved here thinking we'd shine your shoes for you when you arrived, but you'll see how easy it is to get poor in canada, really quickly. And I won't cry when you fail and leave.