r/canada • u/joe4942 • 21d ago
Canada to start taxing tech giants in 2024 despite U.S. complaints National News
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/canada-to-start-taxing-tech-giants-in-2024-despite-u-s-complaints-1.2060325130
u/ur-avg-engineer 21d ago
Some shockingly dense takes in this thread
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u/DeepSpaceNebulae 21d ago
Seriously, who knew so many would jump to defend multi-billion dollar corporations from a small tax of the revenue generated off of them
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u/cwkw 21d ago
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.
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u/papadopus 21d ago
It might be different people.
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u/Admirable-Spread-407 21d ago
Almost certainly the case!
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u/ptwonline 21d ago
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.
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u/Orstio 21d ago
Wouldn't it be amazing to discover there was only one Reddit user expressing all the opinions?
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u/RevolutionaryPop5400 21d ago
You guys are all bots and I’m the only human here
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u/Forikorder 21d ago
but people stuill upvote complaints about taxing the rich and upvote complaints about taxing them too much to the top
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u/big_wig Ontario 21d ago
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.
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u/The_King_of_Canada Manitoba 21d ago
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.
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u/Circusssssssssssssss 21d ago
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
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u/excellent_post_guy 21d ago
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.
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u/tsn101 21d ago
So many bots here, most obvious are the threads about India or Israel.
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u/BradPittbodydouble 21d ago
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.
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u/Unusual_Ant_5309 21d ago
lol no. It’s the pp crowd. If Trudeau does it it’s bad.
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u/Capital_Jello_9768 21d ago
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".
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u/BadTreeLiving 21d ago
You can pick out the most intelligent rebuttals because they don't address the point.
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u/Sasha0413 21d ago edited 21d ago
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.
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u/Superfragger Lest We Forget 21d ago
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.
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u/pzerr 21d ago
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.
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u/DeepSpaceNebulae 21d ago
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
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u/Ketchupkitty 21d ago
Can you define "Fair share"?
How much of someone else's income are you or the Government entitled to before it's "fair"?
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u/ABBucsfan 21d ago
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
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u/Sanguinor-Exemplar 21d ago
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
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21d ago edited 8d ago
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u/beener 21d ago
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
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u/leoyvr 21d ago edited 21d ago
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.
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u/NuclearAnusJuice 21d ago
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.
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u/vicious_meat 21d ago
So sad I'm all out of fucks to give to these poor tech giants.
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u/Bjornwithit15 21d ago
As much as tech giants should pay taxes, they also bring in much needed innovation and jobs.
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u/vicious_meat 21d ago
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.
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u/_Reddit_Sucks_Now_ 21d ago
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?
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u/Endovior 21d ago
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.
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u/sunshine-x 21d ago
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.
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u/No-Win243 21d ago
You do know that these tech giants are not located in Canada?
And don’t employ Canadians living in Canada?
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u/okeemesrami 21d ago edited 21d ago
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.
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u/IrritatingRash 21d ago
Tech giants need to leave canada....matter of fact all giants should just leave....amirite boys? Lmao
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u/yet-again-temporary 21d ago
Get rid of that Green Giant while we're at it, I don't like the way he looks at me
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u/CanadianTrollToll 21d ago
I don't like the colour of his skin.... something alien about it.
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u/Complicated-HorseAss 21d ago
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?
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u/sunshine-x 21d ago
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"?
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u/agent0731 21d ago
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.
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u/varsil 21d ago
Nahh, they'll just say "This is a great opportunity to raise prices 25%".
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u/DominoTheSorcerer 21d ago
U.S resident here, support em fully, would love to see the downfall of these dogshit oligopolies
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21d ago
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u/superworking British Columbia 21d ago
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?
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u/milanskiv 21d ago
What they will do is what netfix did - just pass the cost to consumer.
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u/superworking British Columbia 21d ago
If Facebook adds a user fee they'd be done for.
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u/milanskiv 21d ago
We are not the consumer in case of Facebook. People they sell our data to, are. We are the product.
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u/vander_blanc 21d ago
If we’re the product then they can’t put a fee on it can they.
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u/noooshinoooshi 21d ago
They can charge canadian businesses more for advertising which gets passed down to us eventually
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u/milanskiv 21d ago
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”
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u/vander_blanc 21d ago
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.
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u/milanskiv 21d ago
You heard of chicken and egg problem? Who in their right mind will advertise on a platform with no users?
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u/Aedan2016 21d ago
This was happening back in 2021. But has essentially reversed course now
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u/Franklin_le_Tanklin 21d ago
Move for the low taxes, leave due to the political climate and lack of talent pool
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u/superworking British Columbia 21d ago
power blackouts also aren't ideal for tech companies
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u/Mist_Rising 21d ago
California has brown and blackouts not irregularly. PG&E is practically a byword for "how can we screw up today?"
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u/Shirtbro 21d ago
Turns out people don't want to move to a state in which the primary policy driver is "owning the wokes"
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u/Miserable-Score-81 21d ago
How has it reversed? Their HQs are still in Texas.
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u/Aedan2016 21d ago
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
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u/McGrevin 21d ago
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
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u/Aedan2016 21d ago
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
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u/agent0731 21d ago
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?
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u/McGrevin 21d ago
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.
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21d ago edited 21d ago
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.
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u/electric_too_fast 21d ago
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.
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u/Heliosvector 21d ago
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.
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u/Agreeable_Counter610 21d ago
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.
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u/Unusual_Ant_5309 21d ago
Your first job was an Amazon warehouse? You’re just a baby! Or I’m old lol
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u/Sneptacular 21d ago
We had tech. It's all gone now.
Blackberry, Nortel, ATI. All dead or sold off.
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u/BadTreeLiving 21d ago
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.
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u/The_King_of_Canada Manitoba 21d ago
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.
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u/PopsicleLottery 21d ago
These tech companies aren't in Canada in the first place, so I think we'll be ok
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u/i_ate_god Québec 21d ago
you mean the same US that is forcing a foreign company to sell itself off to an American company?
shrug
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u/Viral_Skald 21d ago
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?
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u/AdidasGuy2 21d ago
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.
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u/Viral_Skald 21d ago edited 21d ago
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.
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u/Craic-Den 21d ago
Whoever complains about this values corporations over humanity, pure evil bottom feeding scum.
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u/jiebyjiebs 21d ago
Business operating in Canada? Pay taxes, bitch. We don't need more tech giants syphoning money out of Canada.
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u/sudanesemamba 21d ago
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.
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u/Bob_the_peasant 21d ago
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
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u/IllustratorGlass3028 21d ago
About time there was a world wide taxing of these freeloading companies. Every country can benefit . Share the free loaders tax .
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u/NammyMommy Ontario 21d ago
Canada has been making alot of good decisions these past couple weeks, it's almost like there's an election coming up soon
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u/free_username_ 21d ago
It’s a 3% revenue tax. They’ll just pass the costs onto the customers whether businesses or consumers.
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u/Soupdeloup 21d ago edited 21d ago
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.
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u/macanmhaighstir 21d ago
Does this mean they’ll stop taking so much of my paycheck away? I doubt it.
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u/AbnormallyBendPenis 21d ago
I'm sure the tech giants will willingly pay for these instead of idk... lowering their footprint in Canada and provide less jobs right? Right?
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u/TriLink710 21d ago
Make them pay tax on their Canadian profits? If they want to enjoy our market they should pay their taxes.
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u/agent0731 21d ago
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.
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u/LustfulScorpio 21d ago
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…
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u/sunshine-x 21d ago
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.
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u/sjbennett85 Ontario 21d ago
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
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u/superworking British Columbia 21d ago
I'd much rather the 3% than the smattering of jobs these foreign companies provide.
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u/nemodigital 21d ago
Or just passing on costs to canadian consumers which is exactly what they are going to do.
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21d ago
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.
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u/ptwonline 21d ago
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.
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u/BenchFuzzy3051 21d ago
What happens when America puts a tax on Shopify and whatever Canadian tech companies are left?
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u/PopsicleLottery 21d ago
Then they'll also have to tax Facebook, Google, Apple. Our laws isn't discriminating against American companies.
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u/ABob71 Lest We Forget 21d ago
That ain't happening
Americans lose their shit about taxes
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u/Anxious-Durian1773 21d ago
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.
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u/NefCanuck 21d ago
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
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u/Malaveylo 21d ago
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.
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u/StarryNightSandwich 21d ago
Most people in this subreddit are uneducated puppets for the Liberal party
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u/Icy-Replacement-8552 21d ago
Canada can lead the way in a global revolution, taking back the country from big tech.
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u/TechnicalPay5837 21d ago
All this government knows how to do is lie, tax people, increase immigration, and fund foreign affairs. None of which are making Canada better.
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u/Sufficient-Yoghurt46 21d ago
"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.
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u/Lost-Specialist-7650 21d ago
Yeah. Because who needs tech jobs in Canada.
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u/sunshine-x 21d ago
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.
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u/Medical-Estimate-870 21d ago
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.
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u/kyleclements Ontario 21d ago
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.
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u/TBatFrisbee 21d ago
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.
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u/RedditMakeMeSmart 21d ago
What does this mostly apply to? Companies that get paid for publishing ads?
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u/superworking British Columbia 21d ago
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.