They also own IMDb... a slight annoyance for me because it's integrated with Amazon's streaming service rather than being a neutral platform for movies.
Amazon runs a business in the UK, they are owned by a parent company in Luxembourg that they pay the majority of all their revenue to, thus making almost no profit, thus paying very little in tax.
They run a business in the UK but pay almost nothing in tax, it should be fixed its not fair on small business owners who have to pay all of there tax and get hammered for it.
Can you not see how its a loop hole? It can so easily be fixed.
Revenue sent to a parent company abroad is deducted as an expense? I find that hard to believe.
According to this article[1], what they actually do is send the payments directly to the Luxembourg company, and Amazon UK is just classified as a delivery company. That makes sense, and frankly, it doesn't shock me. I'm from Portugal and I just bought some comics from an US company. Should they start paying Portuguese corporate taxes?
Yeah, the reason AMZN doesn't pay UK tax is NOT because they are not profitable. It is because they legally avoid taxes by basing all their EU operations out of Luxemburg. Tax codes need reform world-wide to avoid this kind of bad behavior.
Etsy also ships physical things, the only difference is that they subcontract to a delivery company, who obviously doesn't pay taxes over Etsy's profits.
But actually, it's not different, because Amazon also subcontracts, the only difference is that the subcontracted delivery company is named... Amazon. So what they're doing is the same as any companies that ships products to the UK, except that they happen to own both companies and they have similar names.
I fail to see the reason why should Amazon UK pay for the profits earned by Amazon Luxembourg, when DHL or whoever don't pay for Etsy's profits that come from the UK.
Different retailers target different sectors of the market and those sectors have varying levels of profit and growth. To me, Amazon seems to be aiming at the lower end, i.e. they focus on price rather than ethics, so they experience high growth in sales and relatively low profits.
I don't think everyone should copy them. It's like telling Apple to copy Acer or Samsung.
I'm sure I saw a documentary a few years back where an aeroplane engine manufacturer had a control centre. The sole purpose of this place was to track minute engine attributes in real time, and alert their clients of future maintenance. Is that just on the latest planes?
I'm imagining a future where most cameras have Street View style blurring in their hardware. Where vintage digital cameras are sought after and illicit manufacturers produce unauthorised copies with the feature disabled.
I have a picture of my cars license plate in my phone for convenient access. Furthermore, if I am ever in a fender bender I want to have the ability to photograph everything, with license plates unblurred.
The player does not need to pay, but at the same time is subjected to game theory driven psychological trickery that's been developed over decades. Think of it like gambling, but more subtle, yet gambling is heavily regulated.
I suspect that legalisation of weed is going to be a blip in history and they'll heavily tax it to phase it out. It just doesn't make sense to encourage people to breathe in smoke.
While I disagree that legalization will be "just a blip", it's interesting to note that the original law that prohibited marijuana in the US was actually a cleverly worded tax law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marihuana_Tax_Act_of_1937
Basically, marijuana was legal, but you were required to purchase a tax stamp (that was never issued) in order to prove that you had paid taxes on it.
There were many reasons for this, but one factor was that, at the time, the prevailing thought was that Congress did not have the authority to ban the possession of a substance outright within the states. (Even the 18th Amendment was actually carefully worded in a way such that it didn't technically prohibit all possession and sale of alcohol, the way people oftentimes think).
This (tax law) is also the same technique that the Obama administration has used to crack down on legal medical marijuana dispensaries, while still paying lip service to his promise not to[1].
(In the latter case, the tax laws are written in such a way that medical marijuana dispensaries are unable to deduct for normal business expenses that other businesses would be).
Al Capone was also convicted of tax evasion[2], as was Reuben Sturman[3]. Tax law can be used as a "politically correct" excuse to criminalize behavior that otherwise would be politically impossible to criminalize.
That is because Congress has enumerated powers, and the Commerce Clause was then accepted in the intended meaning of only controlling commerce with other countries, between the states, and with Indian tribes. Sales inside of a state are obviously out of the purview of that clause.
Today, of course, the Commerce Clause is interpreted insanely broadly to cover everything from civil rights to environmental protection. Worthy causes, to be sure, but not within the intended purview of, [The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes;
My personal theory of the Commerce Power is that it can be seen as giving the federal government the power to regulate issues that could be described in economic terms as collective action problems. Eliminating infernal tariffs and trade barriers were of course the original animating rationale, but at root that's just one example of a collective action problem. I.e. it makes the country better off not to have internal trade barriers, but states have an incentive to erect trade barriers without some higher authority preventing them from doing so.
While the framers probably didn't fully understand the ramifications, I think the broad language of the Commerce Clause lends itself to a fair reading that Congress can act on matters in which individual states acting alone would face collective action or race to the bottom problems. So something like environmental regulations fits quite naturally into this framework. Pollution doesn't respect state bounderies and states face a race to the bottom problem in attempting to regulate it. Therefore Congress is empowered to act.
Interestingly enough also the way (pre-ban) machine guns and grenades are managed by the feds. Legal, but expensive and time consuimg tax stamp required. Obamacare fines were also considered to be a tax. Taxation is limitless.
On Obamacare. My understanding is that the Obama administration originally tried to justify the law under the commerce clause, and when that failed used taxation as a (relativly) long shot strategy.
Marijuana is a drug that encourages people to be less political active(the "laziness" effect) . I would think governments would like such a thing in politically unstable times.
Yes, governments are simultaneously short-sighted, cunning, inept, plodding, plotting, shambling, scheming and carry out very long-term schemes. But they're also short-sighted and can't do anything right. But also they do nothing unintentionally and 20 things don't go wrong with their schemes. And you can understand governments best by thinking of them as having the motives of a single person in your hunter-gatherer band, who is too greedy and too powerful who takes too much and doesn't give enough back. You can understand governments as you would by trying to read the motives of a single person, capable of thinking, coherency, making singular decisions, led by greed. Basically governments have all the properties of a action movie villain. Think of an action movie villain that isn't motivated by greed or power lust, just like every political villain from all time ever. Taking too much and not giving enough back; betrayal. Or, wait, was I talking about the Greek gods? The natural world can also be understood as reading the motives of a person with human emotions that never do anything by mistake. Think of a movie villain that was more or less accidentally carrying out their misdeeds, mostly coerced by circumstances, blundering along the way. That wouldn't be a very fun movie to watch. Villains always fully choose their evil, no circumstantial factors force their hand. Also Greek gods. And you can understand them by imputing their completely human motives; they always plot and scheme. You have to be able to guess the actions of the other members of your small hominid tribe. Every movie villain explains his motives and his long-winded scheme that would quickly fall apart in reality but that kind of realism wouldn't make a good movie. Political villains however, are often as hopelessly inept as incredibly as they are cunning and good at carrying out multi-generational schemes. Scheming and plotting like a person would. Like Lothar over there by the fire who doesn't give enough back from the hunt, or Runs with Horses over there who is amassing so many alliances as to be a possible threat to my alliances. Could he be planning to attack me, or take my stuff? Me, I care only about the tribe, for others in the tribe, the Real People we should care about, which also includes me of course. I've been doing a lot for the tribe lately. Could you help me tomorrow to rebuild my hut?
Honestly, fuck you. You're the idiot that thinks that it's better to jail people for weed than allow people to make their own decisions. Fuck you, Sudomal.
Just because it's legal doesn't mean anyone is encouraging it. Lots of things are legal that could possibly be dangerous. Guess in your opinion someone had better get that legislation ready to protect the ignorant masses, right?
Does Last.fm support mean just scrobbling, or are there other features you might like? I'm not a Last.fm user but I'd be willing to take a look into including support down the road!
Last.fm scrobbling was the first thing I looked for as well. It's pretty much a necessity for me at this point that any software-based music player I use needs to support last.fm scrobbling. There's several Chrome extensions that take care of it for the in-browser player as people below have mentioned.
I just fired this up, it looks and works great! If you did implement last.fm scrobbling (currently I just use a tampermonkey script that works well) I'd start using it primarily.
