Comment Re:Get ready everyone with anything (Score 1) 189
The deficit caused by these big corporations
Haha, nope. However much money politicians get, they'll outspend it, because they benefit politically from it, because they (still) can borrow on the taxpayers' back, and because they don't pay the consequences themselves.
Also, french here, and it's pretty transparent that the Ministère des Finances going after Google is little more than maybe-legal attempted extortion. It's a mediatic coup destined mostly for french voters, in preparation for the coming presidential elections next year - Hollande has been spending a lot on taxis, journalists, students and more, to ensure their loyalty, and now he's pushing for this as a rally attempt on his own left. This is his strategy to eliminate all competition in advance of the election.
But it's a compromise: it favors the national scene over the international. France has lots of tax agreements with other countries where Google pays its taxes, and going after putative billions like this is seriously endangering those agreements, risking a major disruption of international business. French companies which do a lot of their business abroad could be the eventual victims of this hubris. We have our own tax shelters and fiscal niches, enough to call France a "tax haven" for specific categories of businesses and people, and other coutnries ho'd rather see Google's millions go to their own Treasury might take a hint.