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by cevered 1943 days ago
Who decides who gets subsidized by facebook or not? Seems like the government wants their propaganda subsidized
2 comments
rukuu001 1943 days ago
Good question.

One of the legislation changes Facebook negotiated was if they have ‘enough’ commercial agreements in place, the code won’t apply to them.

I’d love to see a definition of ‘enough’

* edit for autocorrect

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catmanjan 1943 days ago
Probably, Facebook pays zero tax in Australia, and I'm sure the government will be taxing this tithe...
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shanecp 1943 days ago
That assumption is incorrect. They already pay taxes, both directly and indirectly (collected from people as GST).
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jeeeb 1943 days ago
Nitpick: It would be more correct to say that FB collects GST for the Australian Tax Office. In an accounting sense only consumers actually pay GST.

Also worth pointing out that FB’s tax bill in Australia is pretty minimal (rightly or wrongly). The tax on these payments could easily end up being worth more than Facebook’s tax bill in Australia.

FB’s Australian revenue last year was $2.2 billion on which they paid $13.5 million in tax (https://www.afr.com/companies/media-and-marketing/google-fac...).

Actually if you think of these measures as a creative way around US strong arming on a digital services tax they make a lot more sense despite the legislation itself being a weird mess.

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