This is how South Africa's "Netflix tax" could work

[ProfA]

I'll stick with torrents and 20+Tb of storage. Hasn't failed me yet.

 

[krycor]

Honestly this is getting beyond rediculous , just let the people enjoy digital content , as stated above it's allready including VAT , so the goverment is already making money from it, hell if the goverment really wants more tax, fine, get rid of income tax and push VAT up to a acceptable level to compensate, that way everyone pays tax , instead of trying to over tax selected services and having those who pay income tax pay even more!

So in many ways I agree that we shouldn’t be paying more tax, directly or indirectly.

Thing is this started due to local industry players not really gov.. ie monochoice has been bitching about this for years.

Now.. before we knock this, let’s think about this like people who can actually consider the broader implications of trade & tariffs. Globally this is problem due to the way tax and nationality works ie multinationals are relocating services to tax havens where they pay the least tax, then they happily pay vat.. but make a killing on corporate taxes. Again it comes down to global equality.. operating & tax environments are not the same so why should sales be skewed in favor of those corporations with means to abuse it?

While it is true that the end consumer will end up paying for it.. like Trump says.. is it fair that local businesses aren’t afforded the same advantages? Like really think about it.. if you not in Silicon Valley will you have the same access to capital?

So yah.. the net impact is higher cost across the board (ShowMax could up their price by the same margin which acts as a buffer)

Ps. At the end of the day you can thank Trump.. he weaponized the dollar and EU, AU, et al all went hey.. time to democratize commerce. With all the drama of elections in the US(which no other country can get away with), the usd has a shaken future ahead.

 

[krycor]

Found the following on the net which is relevant here:
@swillden wrote "Taxing corporations is stupid, and evil.

I don't say this because I want to make corporations happy, I say this because corporate taxes are inherently foolish. Corporations are legal fictions that combine the financial resources of many owners and combine and direct the labor of many people. They're not people (silly court rulings aside) and it's dumb to treat them as such.

More concretely, the fact is that corporations never actually pay taxes, only people pay taxes. When you demand cash from a corporation, it's just a cost of doing business and one that they will pass on. They can always pass it on because all of their competitors are subject to the same taxes (well, some are big and smart enough to be able to legally avoid taxes... so taxing corporations does yield a net advantage to megacorps who will always, always be able to arrange to pay less on a percentage basis than their smaller competitors).

Where do they pass it? It varies. Obviously the fans of corporate taxation would love it if the corps would pass it on to their investors. And they could actually do that... but that is the very last place they'll pass it. They might sometimes have to do it, but the core goal of corporations is to maximize shareholder value, so they don't want to let the cost land there. Another place they can and do pass it is to their employees, in the form of lower wages. They also try to pass it to their suppliers, in the form of lower prices paid for whatever they have to buy. And finally, and ultimately, they pass it to their customers, in the form of higher prices.

But what matters less than specifically where they pass it is the fact that it's the corporations themselves who decide how to allocate those costs, subject only to some competitive constraints. It's wrong and foolish of legislators to allow corporate boardrooms to decide where those taxes land. Legislatures should decide who pays the taxes.

Moreover, I said that corporate taxation was evil, not just stupid. How is it evil? Simple: Because to lawmakers and voters it looks like "free money". Voters are happy for lawmakers to tax corporations rather than people because their Big Evil Corps. But as I pointed out above, that's a fiction. All of those taxes do ultimately land on voters, in their roles as customers, employees, suppliers and investors. But the voters never see the amounts they're paying.

By making those taxes invisible to the voters, corporate taxes subvert democracy. They make it impossible for taxpayers to accurately assess how much they're paying for the value they're getting from their government. This is evil.

Corporate tax rates should be zero. Everywhere. Instead, you should tax incomes and capital gains in nice, progressive structures that get the money from the people who can afford it, and not from the people who can't. Note that the people who can't afford it is where corporations most like to pass the taxes, because they're least able to defend themselves.

Note that I'm talking about corporate income taxes. It's fine to tax things that corporations do, rather than their profits (which are really the profits of their shareholders, note). For example, it's fine to levy carbon taxes on corporations that burn fossil fuels. It's fine to tax corporations that operate fleets of vehicles for the miles their vehicles put on the roads. And so on. If the goal is to deter the use of some resource, or to offset the societal impact of some process, that's sensible and good, not stupid and evil."

The inherent problem here is IP law and how multinationals operate. Your mom & pop media store that just launched their vod service pays corporate tax in SA, pays salaries, capital from SA.. and pays extortion rates for media rights too along with IP challenges in more favorable markets if they ever want to compete there. All in all they penalized heavily for being based in SA.

You large corp abroad has payed less particularly if they based in the US.. hell it’s part of the start up process to figure out what IP they have and how to externalize it to be more tax efficient.

Wrt taxation in general.. if they only charged on spending again this sort of tariff system would have to come in and monetary systems are not equal nor fair and heavily skewed in favor of the global north. It’s quite fascinating reading Jason Hickel’s book on how the north has extracted wealth from the south nonstop and now that there is a push to democratize things they undermining the very multinational organization they started like IMF, UN, WTO etc

 

[requiem]

The commie anc / eff will shortly tax us to take a dump!?

They already do. You pay a tax on the sewer pipe connected to your property

 

[access]

with fibre and lte speeds etc, torrent options are pretty decent now. you can play/stream a torrent directly without having to download it in full and no need for storage wars.

 

[Gravedigger]

No. Tsek. Last thing we need is more tax. Beginning to sound like Prince John in the Robin Hood stories. Taxes, taxes, taxes...

 

[Yskasmetnstoof]

No tax on Pirate Bay.

 

[Milano]

Does not matter how much tax you collect in a kleptocracy.

 

[SAguy]

with fibre and lte speeds etc, torrent options are pretty decent now. you can play/stream a torrent directly without having to download it in full and no need for storage wars.

No tax on Pirate Bay.

Not everyone knows how to torrent though, and sometimes it's a mission to find something that's decent quality or with correct subtitles.

Also, I've been trying to be a good law abiding citizen and not torrent anymore

 

[Johnatan56]

The inherent problem here is IP law and how multinationals operate. Your mom & pop media store that just launched their vod service pays corporate tax in SA, pays salaries, capital from SA.. and pays extortion rates for media rights too along with IP challenges in more favorable markets if they ever want to compete there. All in all they penalized heavily for being based in SA.

You large corp abroad has payed less particularly if they based in the US.. hell it’s part of the start up process to figure out what IP they have and how to externalize it to be more tax efficient.

Wrt taxation in general.. if they only charged on spending again this sort of tariff system would have to come in and monetary systems are not equal nor fair and heavily skewed in favor of the global north. It’s quite fascinating reading Jason Hickel’s book on how the north has extracted wealth from the south nonstop and now that there is a push to democratize things they undermining the very multinational organization they started like IMF, UN, WTO etc

So how does government adding more taxes for the consumer help that situation? The local "mom and pop store" (which definitely would not be competing in something like VoD) will not get anything out of the increased prices, and companies being based in Silicon Valley means they usually pay more in salaries etc.

We have global players like Naspers that invest here, getting investment is not really an issue, the government is.
(Picked Naspers because used to own Multichoice/showmax)

 

[access]

Not everyone knows how to torrent though, and sometimes it's a mission to find something that's decent quality or with correct subtitles.

Also, I've been trying to be a good law abiding citizen and not torrent anymore

dont need to know how to torrent or browse torrent sites. just press the picture.

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