• Spain Digital users, tiny taxes
  • Minister Calviño insists on a Spanish Google rate

The Google rate will not only impact the accounts of tech giants such as the search engine that names that tax. There are also economies that will lose their differential treatment as a result of this international standard presented Wednesday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Ireland, where corporate tax is exactly half that of Spain (12.5% ​​versus 25%), serves as a European headquarters for companies such as Apple and Facebook, as well as Google itself. "We believe that 10% or more of the corporate tax collected in Ireland could potentially be at risk", calculated from Ibec, the economic confederation of that country, as collected by The Irish Times. That estimate figures the bite in the Irish public treasury at more than 1,000 million euros .

"The current rules, which date back to the 1920s, are no longer sufficient to guarantee an equitable allocation of fiscal rights in an increasingly globalized world," they have stated from the OECD, in a document resulting from negotiations between more than 130 countries The objective is to pay taxes where the benefit is generated, a cause and an effect that are not entirely clear at present, since the Internet has relocated economic activities. The OECD proposal, which not only focuses on technology companies but covers multinationals as a whole, opens up to a public information process, until November 12, with the goal of reaching an agreement for the next month of January. Thus, tax direct debit would no longer be the only variable taken into consideration when collecting taxes.

In Brussels, Ireland has been singled out for favorable treatment to Apple, which has regrouped its income in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and even India. The European Commission claims the Californian company 13,000 million euros .

Paschal Donohoe, Irish Finance Minister, has already warned that any OECD proposal would be "disruptive" to his nation. In addition, there has traditionally been allowed the so-called Double Irish , a system to remit taxes from Ireland to third countries such as tax havens.

A global solution and not only for Spain

The global rate would prevent the European Union from launching one for the Old Continent or that some countries apply their own rates independently of the rest; This was the case in France and this is also the case in Spain. "We ask the future Government to take into account the position of Ametic and wait for the OECD consensus," launched the Spanish technology management yesterday, since the PSOE has said it is willing to implement the rate even in the absence of international consensus.

However, there are obvious signs of certain fiscal mismatches. Back to Google, the involuntary protagonist of the rate, in the past year the company paid 6.8 million euros for corporate tax in Spain , as stated in its latest accounts; This figure represents 24% less than the disbursement of the previous year and the first decrease of its fiscal commitments since 2011. Globally, Google had a profit of 30,736 million dollars in 2018.

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  • Google
  • Spain
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