[funkyy]

Its the revenue got in that country. If Apple gets $300 Mil in revenue to their bank account generated in Canada they pay $3Million tax to the Canadian government, as simple as that. Its tax on revenues that company got to their bank account in the country where they operate. If they want then move the money to US and US would have same rules, they would end up paying another 1%. Total of 2% tax for transferring money from Canada to US for example does not sound that bad, huh? Thats the amount of money PayPal would charge for 1 transaction. And this is all, no hidden tricks - this would result in huge increase in revenues country would get and almost completely wiping out black market as such a low taxes are not worth to avoid for small businesses.

Poland is one of the few countries that already have this tax, but it is high now (I think around 20%) and optional. There is a lot of public discussion to drop it to between 0,5-1% on all revenues for all foreign owned companies making more than €15Mil/year. This got really popular after information that Google is reporting constant losses and not paying taxes despite ridiculous high revenues from local market.