OUTGUNNED ON TAXES

Both the US and Europe are outgunned on taxes. Corporations can and do pay excellent tax attorneys any amount of money to make often spurious arguments as to why they do not have to pay taxes. The poor government attorneys are paid badly and often do not have the necessary litigation experience in tax court.

The current favorite loophole is based on the loophole corporations use to get out of paying state taxes in the US. Taxes are supposed to be based on WHERE the transaction took place. In an increasingly digital world, it is very easy to "cook the books" to show that a transaction took place in a low tax area.

There are two solutions.

One is to have well written international treaties on how multinational corporations divide their revenue between countries. Each country will also have to state that any division doing business in a non-treaty country will be presumed to be reporting fraudulent numbers.

The second is to realize that we have to PAY people who work for the government. Not only does austerity NOT WORK, but austerity reduces the "income" that a government can get from its taxpayers.

This sounds really easy, but is incredibly hard. Writing tax code is extremely difficult as one has to write the code knowing that lawyers will make spurious arguments. Getting countries to agree on a tax formula is also difficult.

Making it worse is the incorrect idea that government employees do not deserve any respect and/or equal pay. (Generally, you get what you pay for.) Plus corporations will spend billions on ads, lobbyists and bribes is order to not pay taxes.

Until this is done, Apple, Google and others can just thumb their noses at tax collectors.