Governments are under increasing pressure to deal with tax evasion. The biggest brands on the planet all use tax evasion constructions to pay less or next to no taxes. Holland has many music royalty deals for music companies that are located elsewhere, mailbox companies that only serve to make it legally true big income streams touched ground in Holland.
Orange, Amazon, Starbucks, Ikea
This is unfair competition. If it is Starbucks, Ikea, Mac Donalds or even Google, it means these brands do not have the same costs as any company of smaller size that does not have the KPN tax consultants, that can not make the undisclosed tax deals. Every country seems to be in a race to the bottom to attract companies with tax reductions, but how about their own population? How about jobs?
Formula : Take something basic everyone does everywhere, make a global franchise and outcompete everyone through tax evasion
If Starbucks had never been able to cut its tax burden in comparison with other coffee selling bagelshops, would it have become the global brand? How many jobs where lost to local economies by the unfair push of Starbucks? Without wanting to be indiscriminate one can pick any other global brand and assume they did the same, make tax free profits helping them to outcompete anyone else in their market niche. You can basically call it a staple commerce landgrab.
Global brands depress local initiative
This is all not very green. It is more efficient if you look at the production side, but it means less people have meaningfull jobs, less variety, less local culture (although with diners and coffee shops this may not be a problem). The large scale of every part of the operation of global brands means lots of reasons to cut corners and pollute. This apart from the logistics and possibly unsustainable sourcing of materials.
Global brands are part of US global cultural domination, which reduces the interest people have in local initiatives, a commmercial version of celebrity worship. We all know how depressing places look if they are only designed to generate the highest yield from consumers. The world a shoppingmall, with it’s global brand outlets.
Consumers are not supposed to pay for, not participate in all the processes that keep them alive and happy
Payback
How to solve this? First of all, stop with the tax evasion. This is simple by requiring all companies to report their income and tax it 100% in the country where the revenue is generated. No international transfers of funds. But more interestingly maybe we should open the brands. We should set a decent standard for a Starbucks outfit, which can’t be difficult, and anyone that can meet that standard can use the brand, without paying for it! This is to compensate for the years of unfair competition. People are clearly brand loyal no matter what. The value of these companies lies in the behaviour they have conditioned in us.
Allow anyone making a decent cup of coffee to carry the name Starbucks
Allow anyone makeing furniture top carry the name Ikea
Allow anyone selling books to carry the name Amazon
This is not so easy with Google or other brands that make a specific product, but for those companies one can require full representation in any country they operate in, so sever parcs in Holland for Google.nl searches. For services rendered online another way of dealing with it is to tax a cut from the revenues that is proportional to the client base the company has in your country. If consumers are the reason why taxable revenues are flowing, then surely the country ‘providing’ them should be rewarded.