[karpierz]

> Every country that managed to get out of poverty did it by moving up the value chain from subsistence farming to eg. textile manufacturing to eg. electronics.

Yes, but they also built domestic industries which had its gains taxed and used to improve the nation. Doesn't work as well when an international corporation books all of the profits overseas.

[fshbbdssbbgdd]

Twitter’s operating margin in 2020 was 1% (in previous years it was negative). Most of its revenue went to compensating employees. Governments can make a lot more money taxing Twitter’s payroll than they can by taxing its profits.

[karpierz]

I should be clearer. I don't mean corporate taxes, I mean capital gains. Ghanaian engineers will produce intellectual capital for Twitter, whose value will be primarily sent back to the United States.

[Ekaros]

On other hand those engineers get wages which are taxed and spend on local economy. So I think that side is positive, even if intellectual capital is moved. Now if local market share will be lost to big international companies, that is certainly negative for a country.

[elefanten]

They also get experience, exposure and connections that they can leverage to grow the local economy over the course of their careers.

[munk-a]

There is a lot of tax revenue to be had - but we still can't excuse the elephant in the room which is that tech companies avoid taxes like nobodies business since the tax code still isn't well suited to actually evaluating how they earn money.

[sneak]

They still haven't figured out how to avoid payroll taxes, however. This argument is a red herring, as it usually focuses exclusively corporate income taxes and ignores the multitude of other taxes corporations have to pay to conduct business.

[Hackbraten]

It would be nice if Twitter’s presence helped kindle domestic entrepreneurship in the long run.

[imtringued]

The trick is that your local employees receive training and good salaries from the international corporations and create their own companies.