France Seeking $1.76 Billion In Back Taxes From Google (reuters.com) 195
An anonymous reader writes: According to a Reuters insider, France is seeking 1.6 billion euros in back taxes from Google, dwarfing what the United Kingdom recently agreed to pay. France apparently has no interest in striking the same 'sweetheart tax' deal that put the UK into a critical light when it revealed that the search giant would pay only 130 million pounds of tax, a $181.18 million settlement, for over 10 years in multi-billion dollar trade in the UK.
long or short scale? (Score:4, Insightful)
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In France, 1 billion means 1 million million. (which is far more logical. A billion is a bi-million, million times a million).
1 billion (US) = 1 milliard (France) = 1000 million.
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Hard drive gigadollars or memory gigadollars?
They're already lowering it! (Score:2, Funny)
France Seeking $1.76 Billion In Back Taxes From Google
According to a Reuters insider, France is seeking 1.6 billion euros in back taxes from Google
Blimey. If it's slid that far between headline and summary, it'll be down to 0 by the morning.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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How much does Google rake in in France per quarter? Not $17 billion. The US accounts for about half of that; French revenue not likely to be a big chunk. Why should Google be taxed by the French on the money they make in the US or elsewhere?
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The taxes need to paid where the revenue is generated and not be scammed as inflated costs in order to shift the profit to tax havens.
My only thought it, hey wait the fuck up, what is going on here. As an individual if I had cheated that much in taxes I would not only be forced to pay it, but interest and a fine on top, but wait, theres more, I would also be not enjoying an extended custodial sentence. So seriously France WTF is going on and why are not a bunch of google bean counters going to prison, se
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This is only the preliminary figure set by the tax authority. They usually issue a preliminary number that the corporation can challenge in court. If they don't challenge or they lose, they pay that PLUS interest and any applicable files.
Unfortunately prison would be hard to arrange because the bean counters will claim that they genuinely misinterpreted the tax laws. It would be hard to prosecute, although I think they should still try because it would set an example for anyone else thinking of trying it on
Re:pump your brakes, slashdotters. (Score:5, Interesting)
France has a population of 66 million people. Assume 2/3 of those use Google (the rest being too young or luddites) and you get 44 million users. Figure Google has a billion users, so France accounts for 4.4% of that.
If you look at Google's growth profile [internetlivestats.com], it more or less forms a triangle going back to about 2005. So assuming constant profit margin, total Google profit has been about $4 billion * 4 quarters * 11 years / 2 = $88 billion.
4.4% of $88 billion is $3.87 billion. So France wants to tax Google at a $1.76 / $3.87 = 45.5% tax rate.
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That's now how tax works, at least not in France. They have a tax rate, they look at the amount of profit generated in France and apply it to that. Nothing to do with population, it's purely the amount of profit Google.fr has made over the past decade in their country.
The French corporation tax rate is 33%. So if that is 45.5% on the global scale, it means that France is making more money for Google than the average of all other countries it operates in. That's hardly surprising.
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4.4% of $88 billion is $3.87 billion. So France wants to tax Google at a $1.76 / $3.87 = 45.5% tax rate.
Shouldn't forget interest and penalties. Penalties in France go up to 300% of the actual tax amount due.
But... (Score:2)
How much does it add up to, when you include late fees, compound interest, inflation, punitive damages, and the megacorp discount?
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Confusing first sentence. (Score:4, Insightful)
The UK owed France taxes? What's that got to do with Google?
You just can't satisfy corporations (Score:2)
First they want to be treated like people and now that they are...
Yaay go France (Score:3)
Yaay go France. I wish the UK had more balls.
Alternatively maybe I can now "agree to pay" about 100th of my UK tax bill. and If not, why not?
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only 130 million pounds of tax, a $181.18 million settlement
Yaay go France. I wish the UK had more balls. Alternatively maybe I can now "agree to pay" about 100th of my UK tax bill. and If not, why not?
$181.18M settlement tells me they wanted $311.18M and got $130M ... I'n no economist, but it looks like they got 42% of the ask, not 1% ... did I miss something or are you more valuable to the UK than Google?
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Whatever. My point wasn't about the figures, but the whole notion that Google can somehow tell the UK Inland Revenue Service how much tax it feels like paying, rather than like the rest of us, have to follow established rules.
Furthermore even 311.18m sounds already massively compromised, given France are apparently legitimately asking for billions.
Neil.
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Yaay go France. I wish the UK had more balls.
Alternatively maybe I can now "agree to pay" about 100th of my UK tax bill. and If not, why not?
Because you probably don't have a bunch of 'lords' or whoever it is that makes your laws and legal rulings with a vested interest in you making a nice profit for them to get a share of.
corporate welfare (Score:2)
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Please define bloated.
How would money being taken from profit generating entities be used to "Inject" money into the economy more efficiently than the entity making money doing it?
If your idea of fair share is everyone paying a larger percentage of taxes than you do - you just don't get it. If Warren Buffet believes he is paying too little in taxes, he is free to mail the IRS a check for the surplus taxes he believes he owes. Since he doesn't send this check in, he is basically
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It's like art. Hard to define but when a company is making 88 billion dollars and paying a few hundred million in taxes, you know something is wrong.
I hope france nails google hard.
Not because google- but because all the other companies and corporations that are externalizing their costs on host countries and then refusing to pay revenue to the countries.
Re:France should try innovating... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Fuck Apple, Google, Facebook etc. These leeches need to start contributing like the rest of us.
Re:France should try innovating... (Score:4, Interesting)
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France has serious economic problems This kind of stupidity on the part of the French government will only discourage investment in the country further and hurt them even more.
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Google has already paid the equivalent of its income tax, namely in sales tax. In any case, you argued that Google "profits from French infrastructure", and you have failed to justify that assertion. All the infrastructure Google uses in France is more than paid off by other taxes besides corporate income tax.
In fact, Google's high profits are due to Google's software and innovation, and France has done noth
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That's why I wrote:
I wrote that before you tried to hijack this discussion by turning it into an irrelevant semantic debate whether corporate tax is the equivalent of income tax or not. I repeat: Google's use of infrastructure is already accounted for through other taxes.
If we look at this objectively in terms of righ
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And the companies can't operate in France without all the infrastructure and civilisation paid for by taxes. If France stops getting taxes from companies which operate there, then those companies can't continue to operate, and France falls apart. This is the same for every single country on the face of the planet which collects taxes. That's how it works. It's amazing this has to be explained to you.
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And France is already falling apart. French civilization? Don't make me laugh.
Re:Good for France (Score:5, Insightful)
avoid .... owe ... legal fraud
If you can avoid it, you do not owe it. It is legal. It is not fraud, however unjust you may think it is.
If you owe it, try to hide it, and do not pay it, it's called "Tax Evasion". That's against the law, you don't pay back taxes you pay back taxes and go to jail.
If there is a dispute between what you think you owe, and what the government thinks you owe, it's called a lawsuit. If France wins, google owes back taxes (presumably with interest). If Google wins they still pay nothing.
France is asserting that Google does in fact owe money that Google does not believe it owes. It's a lawsuit. This distinction is incredibly important in many countries, as what these companies are doing is usually LEGAL. It is our own governments that are screwing up in tax law, and our governments that need to fix the problem. Of course the second you talk about "fixing" tax law, you end up with all sorts of barnyard noises in congress (in the US, but I imagine we don't have the market cornered on this). It's easier in this case to wage a war of public opinion (similar to FBI and keys to the city) than to actually try to get these sorts of laws changed against a hostile congress. But, as a people, we need to understand this: the government is complicit. The only reason these lawsuits even happen is that there is debate, there shouldn't be debate.
Also when you go do lawsuit stuff, you always exaggerate your claims. It's part of the game.
Re:Good for France (Score:5, Insightful)
avoid .... owe ... legal fraud
If you can avoid it, you do not owe it. It is legal. It is not fraud, however unjust you may think it is.
If you owe it, try to hide it, and do not pay it, it's called "Tax Evasion". That's against the law, you don't pay back taxes you pay back taxes and go to jail.
If there is a dispute between what you think you owe, and what the government thinks you owe, it's called a lawsuit. If France wins, google owes back taxes (presumably with interest). If Google wins they still pay nothing.
France is asserting that Google does in fact owe money that Google does not believe it owes. It's a lawsuit. This distinction is incredibly important in many countries, as what these companies are doing is usually LEGAL. It is our own governments that are screwing up in tax law, and our governments that need to fix the problem. Of course the second you talk about "fixing" tax law, you end up with all sorts of barnyard noises in congress (in the US, but I imagine we don't have the market cornered on this). It's easier in this case to wage a war of public opinion (similar to FBI and keys to the city) than to actually try to get these sorts of laws changed against a hostile congress. But, as a people, we need to understand this: the government is complicit. The only reason these lawsuits even happen is that there is debate, there shouldn't be debate.
Also when you go do lawsuit stuff, you always exaggerate your claims. It's part of the game.
I think the problem here is NOT that it is illegal or legal. They are using tricks to evade the laws or go in areas where the laws haven't explicitly forbidden. Companies are actively seeking loopholes in the wording or in international tax treaties, they are then abusing these holes. It may be legal by the letter of the law (or at least not illegal), but it was certainly not the intention of the law to allow it. It is like someone finding a way to steal or kill someone with some new technology and then finding the law doesn't cover it, it is obvious it is wrong and should be illegal but it hasn't been made explicitly illegal so they get away with it.
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Re:Good for France (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the problem here is NOT that it is illegal or legal. They are using tricks to evade the laws or go in areas where the laws haven't explicitly forbidden.
And those tricks and gaps, you think they were accidents? That Google, et. al are the only people who scrutinize tax laws?
I don't believe it for a second. That scrutiny is a prerequisite for the laws to have passed to begin with. The only people who cannot afford that scrutiny are the people being hurt. What has happened is that the general public, not just in France but everywhere, has caught on to this and is crying foul. And so we have this charade.
What is lost when people blame Google or Apple or Microsoft for these things is the message: your government sold you out. The outcome of this is, for the continued peace of France, is they're going to find something Google did wrong and Google is going to pay a nominal sum that sounds big to make it go away. The people will be happy that evil Google had to pay the piper but the laws won't change. Google will continue to pay less than what was intended, and a hundred other multinats will continue doing what they've always done.
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What is lost when people blame Google or Apple or Microsoft for these things is the message: your government sold you out.
What a load of shit. The tax laws are a culmination of hundreds of years of add-ons, concessions, modifications etc for whatever was required on the day, with the intent to create a fair system. "The government" is just people like you trying to do the best they can, and corporations are also just people doing whatever they can.
This situation is because corporations now spend far more resources looking for holes in these laws than any public office could ever hope to to counter them. So they have an unfair
Re:Good for France (Score:4, Insightful)
avoid .... owe ... legal fraud
If you can avoid it, you do not owe it. It is legal. It is not fraud, however unjust you may think it is.
If you owe it, try to hide it, and do not pay it, it's called "Tax Evasion". That's against the law, you don't pay back taxes you pay back taxes and go to jail.
If there is a dispute between what you think you owe, and what the government thinks you owe, it's called a lawsuit. If France wins, google owes back taxes (presumably with interest). If Google wins they still pay nothing.
France is asserting that Google does in fact owe money that Google does not believe it owes. It's a lawsuit. This distinction is incredibly important in many countries, as what these companies are doing is usually LEGAL. It is our own governments that are screwing up in tax law, and our governments that need to fix the problem. Of course the second you talk about "fixing" tax law, you end up with all sorts of barnyard noises in congress (in the US, but I imagine we don't have the market cornered on this). It's easier in this case to wage a war of public opinion (similar to FBI and keys to the city) than to actually try to get these sorts of laws changed against a hostile congress. But, as a people, we need to understand this: the government is complicit. The only reason these lawsuits even happen is that there is debate, there shouldn't be debate.
Also when you go do lawsuit stuff, you always exaggerate your claims. It's part of the game.
I think the problem here is NOT that it is illegal or legal. They are using tricks to evade the laws or go in areas where the laws haven't explicitly forbidden. Companies are actively seeking loopholes in the wording or in international tax treaties, they are then abusing these holes. It may be legal by the letter of the law (or at least not illegal), but it was certainly not the intention of the law to allow it. It is like someone finding a way to steal or kill someone with some new technology and then finding the law doesn't cover it, it is obvious it is wrong and should be illegal but it hasn't been made explicitly illegal so they get away with it.
No, the problem is EXACTLY whether it is legal or illegal.
The definition of something being illegal is that there is a law that prohibits that behavior. If there isn't a law against it then it is legal. Argue all you want whether loopholes are just or unjust and whether the use of a loophole for non-intended use is moral or immoral but the point is that poorly crafted tax laws results in the legal reduction in tax burden for companies and rich people who can hire smart tax accountants.
As for your comparison, it's completely stupid. We have laws against murder and theft, full stop. Doesn't matter how you do it or if you use a proxy. The laws even cover being a party or conspiracy to murder. The only loophole, if you want to call it that, for murder is self-defense.
There is no law that says that you have to pay a specific amount of taxes. For example, if there was a law that all companies must pay a minimum of 10% in taxes with no qualifications and Google used loopholes as justification to pay less then your argument would make sense. There is no such law as far as I know.
I agree with you that in a just world corporations would shoulder more of the tax and infrastructure burden than they do. But it's up to us to vote in and lobby people who can change the laws.
Re:Good for France (Score:5, Insightful)
The English heritage of following letter of law rather than spirit is not followed in all jurisdictions. Fortunately.
In particular, continental Europeans following Roman/civil/whatever-you-wanna-call-it systems will take a very different approach to writing and interpreting rules that make it much harder to say, "But if you think carefully about it, it the words could be construed to mean THIS rather than THAT!" If THAT is obviously what was intended, THIS is you trying to be a smartarse to evade the social contract you entered into when deciding to do business in the country, and nobody gives a fuck.
This is quite confusing to Englishmen and Americans, who regard laws as disconnected from lawmakers - a thoroughly intellectually dishonest position.
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The problem with following the spirit of the law is that it's harder to know what the law actually is, and there's nothing to stop it from being inconsistently applied. In the common law system, it's harder to know all the applicable law, but once you do the more common ambiguities have typically been resolved already, and more consistency introduced. (Not that this always works. It surprised me to find out that US Federal law differs from place to place, because different appeals courts had ruled diffe
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That's now how it works in France, or most European countries. If there is a loophole or ambiguity you can try to exploit it, but courts are unlikely to support you if you didn't even ask the tax authority for their opinion first. See, when there is ambiguity in the law most European systems expect you to see clarification, not milk it for all it's worth*. If you act in obviously bad faith that way, don't expect courts to agree with your interpretation unless you have a damn good case.
* Is it "all its worth
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Just wait until the government comes after you for using the "loophole" of only paying what the tax table they provided you claimed you owe.
"What, you used our tax table to pay what we said you owe? Well THERE'S your problem! No wonder you under paid us. Now give us the rest of our money."
As you say, just because the law as written says you must only pay what the tax table says you should be paying, doesn't mean you not paying enough is right or legal.
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In most countries the tax laws are the way they are because each nation's government has created loopholes for its own big corporations and businesses. England, for example, has a terrible rate on taxation of its own companies. Rolls-Royce clears £1.1B in profits every year and only pays £2M in taxes. It's just easier for them to point fingers at American corporations and scream in outrage than to admit they are hypocrites. Old news.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2287216/Revealed-On
Re:Good for France (Score:4, Insightful)
If you owe it, try to hide it, and do not pay it, it's called "Tax Evasion". That's against the law, you don't pay back taxes you pay back taxes and go to jail."
In the US where these terms are routinely applied in this manner the difference is in fact what the IRS says it is with individuals who have exploited tax loopholes often categorized as "Tax Evasion" whether in code or not, since most of the code is ambiguous and at the discretion of the auditor. While large corporations tend to be given the benefit of the doubt.
In fact, many things that are perfectly legal for corporations are explicitly outlawed for individuals. For instance, I know of one massive corporation that would silo off portions of it's operation that cost money, incorporate separately, then charge the original company exactly $1 over costs for services each year. Because that business made $1 instead of taking a multi-year loss it would not trigger any kind of review or audit. As an individual you would be hammered in multiple ways for doing this. For starters because you own more than 60% interest, for another because the entire cost center corporation is not actually intended to generate substantial profit and would be declared a "hobby", for another it evades deduction limits.
On the flip side, incorporated entities that are small really get burned with double taxation. You have to pay tax on the corporations income and then turn around and pay again when the corporation pays income to you. This double taxation is the justification for many of the corporate tax write offs that individuals don't get and they make sense or are even too restrictive to avoid double taxation for these small incorporated businesses while allowing billions in dodged taxes for massive public entities.
double taxation sure, but your arithmetic. ..? (Score:2)
I'm with you on the double taxation, and for many small businesses some of the money is even triple-taxed, after this owner spends WAY too much time dealing with way too much paperwork for many different kinds of taxes.
This part doesn't make sense to me, though:
> would silo off portions of it's operation that cost money, incorporate separately, then charge the original company exactly $1 over costs for services each year. Because that business made $1 instead of taking a multi-year loss it would not tri
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Suppose you split off department B into company B.
Company A still has $100 in sales and pays $80 to company B, so they still have a profit of $20 on which they pay income tax. Company B has no profit and thus pays no income tax. The income tax is the same either way."
It doesn't make sense because you are oversimplify
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That may be true in France. Here in the US you actually have to appeal to the revenue service and they judge the dispute. This is similar to if you are denied a claim by Social Security for disability. Of course, eventually if it goes far enough up the chain you can eventually appeal to an actual court but you can't go straight away and in the meantime there is nothing you can do for a perio
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If the French courts find the accounting methodology Google are using is not legal, it may well be tax evasion.
At that point you're talking punitive fines, not just interest assessments.
Google have good lawyers though, I'm sure they'll be fine...
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We don't use lawsuits for everything in Europe. The government has an agency that handles tax. It decided Google had not paid the correct amount, after some investigation. Google can appeal via the courts (not a lawsuit, it's asking the court to decide a matter of tax law).
It's up to companies to make sure they declare their earnings correctly and pay the right amount of tax. Honest mistakes are usually accepted, but here Google tried to avoid paying â1.6bn by misinterpreting the rules and not botherin
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And let's not forget that the laws are not set up the way they are by accident. Those "loopholes" were bought and paid for with bribes (Sorry... lobbying and gifts) to the the politicians who wrote the tax code. Here in the US, it was outfits like Halliburton, Exxon, Bechtel, and Arthur Andersen (Sorry... Accenture). In France, it's probably the likes of EADS (Airbus), Credit Agricole, GDF, and Dassault.
The only reason they're all so butthurt over the tax strategy of Apple and Google and other tech comp
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avoid .... owe ... legal fraud
If you can avoid it, you do not owe it. It is legal.
And if it turns out they can't avoid it, then they did indeed owe it, and it was fraud.
Good thing we have courts to decide these things, rather than what you (not you personally, the collective you) happen to believe on any given day.
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It's not necessarily fraud. It could theoretically be a good-faith different interpretation, although that's not what instantly comes to mind when talking about multinational corporate taxes.
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Politicians do not want flat, loophole-free taxes. They sought power to hand out favors in exchange for donations legal and illegal.
That is why they are there. This theory has the exact same solid, predictive capability of relativity and quantum mechanics.
If anything, a simplified tax code allows them to re-start handing out the loopholes all over again.
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I propose that if a patent company wants to...
First, your idea is too limited in scope. I will instead develop the IP in the child country, using offshore labor working directly for their western counterpart, and it will never be owned by me. This is actually not far from what is already going on in many companies. You are just adding a small stone in front of a river.
Second, you are trying to fix the problem, rather than fix the blame. That is a somewhat novel approach these days.
Re:Good for France (Score:5, Funny)
>> I will never again eat at Burger King in large part because of their tax inversion
Oddly enough, I stopped eating there because of intestinal inversion.
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I will never again eat at Burger King in large part because of their tax inversion
Oddly enough, I stopped eating there because of intestinal inversion.
Another odd fact: Your mouth and your anus are directly connected by a rather short tube. Eating at places like Burger King and MacDonalds brings that fact into renewed focus, I think.
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If Google is based in the US and making money from people in the UK they should pay the taxes in the US. They should not be paying taxes on the same income in both countries, that is ridiculous.
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In this case where it is all beginning to get a bit s
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Maybe Osborne did give Google money and then claim to the press that they had paid a "substantial" value in back taxes to the treasury.
I guess the Eton curriculum doesn't cover the correct use of "substantial".
Re:"the United Kingdom recently agreed to pay" (Score:4, Insightful)
"France demanded reparations for all their soldiers killed by English bowmen."
England lost more soldiers fighting for France in one day on the Somme (WWI) than the English killed in the whole hundred years war
Re:"the United Kingdom recently agreed to pay" (Score:4)
"France demanded reparations for all their soldiers killed by English bowmen."
England lost more soldiers fighting for France in one day on the Somme (WWI) than the English killed in the whole hundred years war
As someone who grew up around a family member who parachuted into Normandy I certainly understand the sentiment. However how many of those deaths were due to the incompetence of English generals?
A joke I learned from the old paratrooper:
At the start of a mission briefing an officer asks his men what is the number one killer of paratroopers?
One of the men responds, "sir, its generals, usually your own."
The officer then asks what is the number two killer of paratroopers?
Re:"the United Kingdom recently agreed to pay" (Score:5, Interesting)
Just as an aside, my Father was at Dunkirk in 1940 in the BEF and had nothing but praise for the French. Americans joke about them being "Cheese eating surrender monkeys", but if the French 2nd Army hadn't fought on alone and unsupported for 2 days, my Dad probably would have been captured by the Germans, and the War might have been lost right there.
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They war almost certainly wouldn't have been lost if you're father had been captured. The war wouldn't have even been lost if *all* of them had been captured. They were the ground soldiers. I guess you could say that the captured wouldn't have been in N. Africa but there were still plenty of troops if you look at the numbers.
To put N. Africa into scale and WWII numbers, the surrendering Germans were something like 225,000 - in pretty much one go. Would it have been tougher? Maybe, but probably not a hell of
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Obviously the Royal Navy could still have controlled the Channel, but a negotiated surrender would almost certainly have happened.
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There were plenty of badly organized and equipped troops in Britain while the BEF was in France, training and equipping. Combine that with the naval defenses, and the fact that the ports that were threatened were rigged for demolition, and the Germans could not have successfully invaded Britain.
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Randall Munroe did a What If? recently, and concluded that the Sun still doesn't set on the British Empire, but there's times when the only sunshine is on one small and (IIRC) fairly desolate place.
The Dominions had somewhat uncertain status as part of the UK. Australia didn't declare war on Germany, figuring that the British declaration covered them. Australia did declare war separately on Japan. I think the loss of Australian troops in the fall of Tobruk had something to do with that. The worse the
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However, in 1939 the New Zealand Army consisted of about 300 men.
Re:"the United Kingdom recently agreed to pay" (Score:4)
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That still doesn't explain why more than half of American voters selected George W. Bush having already experienced four years of his presidency, nor why so many Republicans are currently choosing Donal Trump.
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again, this has nothing to do with anything, mod me and OP off topic
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The OP said "We understand that there is often a great disparity in beliefs and actions between a nation's political/social/economic elites and the ordinary citizen". This isn't true if you live in a democracy and vote for those people, because they don't just miraculously get those jobs.
And incidentally, as one of the other replies points out: that statement is also wholly inaccurate. I've lived in the US (before that whole stupid, ignorant freedom fries thing that soured relations for a while) and heard
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sorry voting against someone is retarded. write someone in, dont keep voting for the status quo
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Were all the independents a bunch of crackpots? Why do so many Americans only feel like they can vote for candidates from the two biggest parties?
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To be fair we Americans are usually referring to French politicians and "elites" in such jokes, not ordinary citizens. We understand that there is often a great disparity in beliefs and actions between a nation's political/social/economic elites and the ordinary citizen ... whether that nation is France, Russia, China, Iran, etc.
To be fair, some Americans are usually referring to French politicians and "elites" in such jokes, Most Americans don't know why they're joking about the French except as blind us versus them prejudice ingrained by the popular culture. I spoke to my dad that I was going on a trip to Paris and he and his friends said you couldn't pay them to go to Paris, yet they had no reason beyond "because, freedom fries" for why they harbor such. Even then, our "jokes" about WW2 are usually just taking cheap shots due to
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"Cheese eating surrender monkeys" was a one-off joke about an uneducated *Scottish* character's opinion of France when he was forced into the position of substitute French teacher. It was an obvious over-the-top exaggeration of the thousand year long cross-channel rivalry and, to my recollection, was not repeated on the show.
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Frenchmen, when led be either a female or non-frenchmen, make perfectly good soldiers. Their is something about the french male however, that when given authority at the rank of General or higher, turns their brains into swiss cheese.
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"...my Dad probably would have been captured by the Germans, and the War might have been lost right there."
Your Dad must have been a hell of a fighter !!
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Americans just place far too much emphasis on WW II. Prior to that war France was seen as great power you didn't want to mess with. But while it's true individual French soldiers and units fought bravely and effectively, as a whole the French army did not live up to expectations in 1940.
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It's worth noting that the French army adopted new and better tactics during the six-week battle, which is not something armies resigned to defeat do. The French defeat was because of a single gross miscalculation on the part of the French high command, although there were other weaknesses that contributed also.
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"France demanded reparations for all their soldiers killed by English bowmen."
England lost more soldiers fighting for France in one day on the Somme (WWI) than the English killed in the whole hundred years war
Only cos' there were less people back then.
Re:Doesn't add up, greater than 100% tax! (Score:4, Informative)
Your numbers are out more than just a little.... Google took in 74.15 billion in revenue in 2015. France isn't looking for 10% of Google's revenue. They are looking for back taxes over the period in which Google operated in France which looks to have averaged 1.2 billion euro over the past 5 years.
Re:American's future entrepreneurs are watching (Score:5, Insightful)
Please tell me you are joking.
2025, boardroom of a start-up company looking on where to invest, where to find customers, and where to set up offices:
Chris: Hey Jo, I've been looking at our European customer base. We haven't really been targeting them but there seems to be a lot of interest. You think we should look into setting up offices there?
Jo: Really, we should have been doing it earlier. If we don't get a significant percentage of the worlds population using our system we can be too easily displaced.
Chris: You know tax rates are higher there don't you?
Jo: Yeah they are. But if we don't try to avoid taxes in those regions we can easily budget for them. Of course we could do what Google did and walk the grey line and then negotiate hard when they come after us.
Chris: Hmmmm I'll give that some thought. It could be good to have the extra cash early but we will need to budget for settlements and the risk associated with that.
There is NO WAY that an international company will ignore the second largest consumer population block in the world. None. Not a chance. Christ companies bend over backwards to operate in China and the Eurozone is bigger financially in total.
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Careful, ponder who you're dealing with. Governments tend to already HAVE hitmen. And they even operate legally within their borders.
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So can individual corporations that try to sidestep governmental demands. Google is a big player, no doubt about that, but in none of its business areas it holds a monopoly. Not even a de facto one.
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The person you replied to is an Anaco-capitalist. (No, that does not mean Libertarian. They're diametrically opposed views, in all actuality.)
What they said, including the violence, is in-line with their beliefs. If nothing else, they're consistent and you've gotta respect that. They're sincere held beliefs which is a lot better than many have. Don't get me wrong, I think they're insane (but probably not retarded or stupid) and I think that anarchy will never reach the plateau that is assumed. I also think
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Wait, what? Every businessman left France?
Wow, talk about an opportunity! No matter what market I want, I'd have a monopoly! Sure, tax is high, but hey, pass it on to the customer, who gives a shit about taxes?
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http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi... [bbc.com]
I couldn't find any reliable figures, but appears to be similar both ways (around 200k). Perhaps more interesting is that there are 1.2million!!! Brits in Australia.