The issue isn’t so much any anti-competitive misbehavior. Even though there are some specific practices that have landed FAANG in hot waters, those aren’t really different from any other companies’ of similar size.
Monopolization just happens to be the natural state of any system that has network effects and where all costs are front-loaded (I. e. write the code once, scale to billions of users at, if you squint, zero marginal costs).
But neither of these issues are the motivation for calls for a “digital tax”. Nor is economic nationalism. There have always been industries that were dominated by one or just a few countries: the US has media/entertainment, consumer goods manufacturing has almost entirely moved to Asia, etc.
What’s different about “digital” is that requires essentially zero presence or taxable activity at the consumers’ location. Nobody felt the need to tax Hollywood’s movies because a ticket to ‘Titanic’ in Austria may have meant 2€ leaving the country, but the bulk of it actually stayed in the local economy, as (taxed) revenue of the theatre, local distributors, corn growers, and breweries.
For physical products, this is even more obvious. French champagne served in a Billings, Montana restaurant is about 50% margin for the venue, 30% for the US-based distribution chain, and only 20% goes to funny mustaches people in striped shirts.
A digital tax is basically an equivalent to custom tax. Goods like German cars have to pay custom taxes during importing them to the US. A Netflix stream from the US to Germany not. And that is getting fixed.
But it is fair to say: this is not only about taxes. This is also about countries gain control over global economy.
Just because it happens for historical reasons doesn't mean it was a good idea. Not to mention those are physical things that require tangible resources to reproduce.
There's so many things I have to pay 20-30% more for in Canada (for ex: $150 for shoes that are $100 in the US) for ridiculous protective import policies for old non-core industries that do little to help the economy.
I think you're misunderstanding the flow of money here. No one is opposing sale of goods and services in another country. They're opposing booking the profits in a third, unrelated, low-tax country.
It's like the French vineyard sold all their wine at cost to an Irish holding firm, which then sold it at a markup around the world and booked all the profits. Except the vineyard also owns the holding company.
Neither the Montana buyer nor the French manufacturer are in Ireland, but that's where the money winds up and taxes paid.
Monopolization just happens to be the natural state of any system that has network effects and where all costs are front-loaded (I. e. write the code once, scale to billions of users at, if you squint, zero marginal costs).
But neither of these issues are the motivation for calls for a “digital tax”. Nor is economic nationalism. There have always been industries that were dominated by one or just a few countries: the US has media/entertainment, consumer goods manufacturing has almost entirely moved to Asia, etc.
What’s different about “digital” is that requires essentially zero presence or taxable activity at the consumers’ location. Nobody felt the need to tax Hollywood’s movies because a ticket to ‘Titanic’ in Austria may have meant 2€ leaving the country, but the bulk of it actually stayed in the local economy, as (taxed) revenue of the theatre, local distributors, corn growers, and breweries.
For physical products, this is even more obvious. French champagne served in a Billings, Montana restaurant is about 50% margin for the venue, 30% for the US-based distribution chain, and only 20% goes to funny mustaches people in striped shirts.