"Trying to rationalize why one company should not pay taxes while others do is bad."
It is not particularly bad if you take into account where they actually make their money.
Would you levy UK taxes on every penny Google makes, simply because their sites are accessible in the UK and used by UK residents? That would make no sense.
Google should be taxed fairly on the business they do in the UK, sure, but nothing more. I think that was the grandparent's point: Google likely does less business in the UK than Starbucks or Amazon, and even then the business that they do perform is more immaterial and it's harder to identify the source.
Thus it makes some sense that Google's evasion is "less surprising" in a way, because it is on a smaller scale. No one is saying that Google should not have to pay taxes on the business it does in the UK; we are simply quantifying what it means to do business and in what way.
This is, in fact, quite logical thinking, and there's no need to be alarmed.
> Would you levy UK taxes on every penny Google makes, simply because their sites are accessible in the UK and used by UK residents? That would make no sense.
You check they're not using weird accounting to set up a (tiny) business in a low tax regime, and then syphoning money out of the high tax regime into that low tax regime.
Google has customers in the UK buying ads, and people in the UK viewing ads - it seems reasonable that they should pay UK tax on those bits.
It is not particularly bad if you take into account where they actually make their money.
Would you levy UK taxes on every penny Google makes, simply because their sites are accessible in the UK and used by UK residents? That would make no sense.
Google should be taxed fairly on the business they do in the UK, sure, but nothing more. I think that was the grandparent's point: Google likely does less business in the UK than Starbucks or Amazon, and even then the business that they do perform is more immaterial and it's harder to identify the source.
Thus it makes some sense that Google's evasion is "less surprising" in a way, because it is on a smaller scale. No one is saying that Google should not have to pay taxes on the business it does in the UK; we are simply quantifying what it means to do business and in what way.
This is, in fact, quite logical thinking, and there's no need to be alarmed.