Reply to post: Re: Never have money when powerful governments are broke.

The Schmidt's hit by the fan: Alphabet investor sues Google bigwigs over EU antitrust ruckus

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Re: Never have money when powerful governments are broke.

Especially if you've got the money through what later turns out to be dodgy business practices on an enormous scale, because then you were never entitled to that money in the first place. Reporting it as profit makes it worse, because there's shareholders who will be extremely disappointed when they learn that the books didn't reflect reality after all.

Given the amount of money Google, Apple, Amazon, Starbucks, etc, don't pay in tax anywhere it's not surprising that governments are beginning to take an interest. If governments worldwide decide that these companies are no longer socially useful but are instead bleeding their economies dry to a damaging extent, they will act. The US government used to be quite good at this - IBM, Bell, Xerox?, Standard Oil, etc.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon