[ipaddr]

Because you create a loophole where non-profitable companies commit the offense and get cash back (if fines were connected to revenue, negative revenue would become a reward)

[ThunderSizzle]

If fines were tied to revenue, then non-profit wouldn't stop the fine. If you had $1200 in revenue, and $1000 in expenses, the fine could be calculated against rhe $1200, which is exactly what non-companies have to do.

And it would make sense to be revenue-based, as opposed to profit-based.

[jedberg]

Obviously you would have a floor, just like taxes do.

[Brybry]

Yep, plenty of fines work this way. It's how GDPR works: percent of turnover (revenue) or a floor, whichever is higher [1].

And worst case scenario define revenue in the fine's terms in a way that it disallows accounting tricks.

[1] https://gdpr-info.eu/art-83-gdpr/#:~:text=turnover

[lupire]

That the max fine for GDPR, not the min.

GDPR is really a "fine whatever they want" regime, starting small and increasing for non compliance.

[Brybry]

> up to 20,000,000 EUR, or in the case of an undertaking [economic entity], up to 4% of the total worldwide annual turnover of the preceding financial year, whichever is higher

I think the "whichever is higher" wording does make it a floor but you're right that the "up to" makes it whatever they want. So I guess it's a meaningless variable floor.

It still works out similarly: they could fine a company like Amazon, with a lot of revenue, up to around 21 billion (regardless of profit) while they could only fine a small company up to 20 million.

[insane_dreamer]

we're talking about it being tied to __gross__ revenue, not net revenue (profit)

[erikaww]

You can’t have negative revenue or if there is some obscure definition, just handle that edge case