Esta situação é
absolutamente escandalosa na perpectiva do contribuinte. A Booking, através da
sua actividade só contribuiu para uma espiral especulativa do Imobiliário e da
crise da habitação para os habitantes locais. O Municipal de Amsterdão há muito
tempo que luta contra a Booking e a Airbnb que fogem a impostos e que não
disponibilizam dados e informação afim de poderem ser fiscalizados. Isto,
enquanto usufruíram de vantagens fiscais escandalosas e, por exemplo, no tempo
das vacas gordas investiram 14 bilhões de dólares em ‘buybacks’ ou seja compra
especulativa das próprias acções afim de levantar o valor das mesmas.Portanto
durante anos não tiveram em conta o ‘sistema’ dentro do princípio selvagem do
Neo-Liberalismo, mas agora, vêm pedir ajuda ao Estado, ou seja , ao dinheiro do
contribuinte. Leiam o artigo do Volkskrant ( 17-4-20200 ), em baixo traduzido em Inglês. Agora, estes
campeões da ‘treta’ e da mentira da ‘economia de partilha’, vêm pedir apoio ao Estado, ou seja ao
dinheiro dos contribuintes para poderem salvar-se e sustentar as legiões de
‘ex-pats’ que trabalham para eles !?!...
OVOODOCORVO
ANALYSIS
CONTROVERSIAL STATE AID
Hasn't Booking.com had enough gifts from Vadertje Staat?
The world's largest travel site relies on government
support. This undermines solidarity among taxpayers.
Jonathan
Witteman16 april 2020, 22:29
'Be quick, only 3
support packages available! 15 multinationals are currently looking at this
offer,' one Twitter user parodied Booking.com's infamous lure son on Wednesday
evening, after the company announced it was requesting emergency support from
the Dutch state. The world's largest travel site is suffering from the corona
crisis – 85 percent of bookings have been wiped out, ceo Glenn
Fogel told his staff – that the until recently multibillion-dollar
multinational wants to make use of the Dutch NOW scheme. Through that scheme,
designed to prevent redundancies, taxpayers will pay up to 90% of the wages
from companies threatened with toppling.
And that is
wriggling, because Booking.com has already received billions of euros from the
taxpayer in recent years. For example, through the so-called 30% scheme, which
means that the many expats in amsterdam Booking.com offices do not have to pay
tax on 30% of their income over 30% of their income in the first five years.
That's small beer compared to the 1.8 billion euros saved Booking.com according
to research by business magazine Quote between 2010 and 2018 thanks to the'InnovationBox',
a tax bill with which the government wants to stimulate innovation. This EUR
1.8 billion, according to critics a glorified form of tax avoidance, is
equivalent to roughly seven annual salaries for all 5500 Bookingemployees inthe Netherlands, whose
average income is 47 thousand euros.
150 million euros
in unpaid VAT
Unintended tax
gifts were also available, in the eyes of foreign tax authorities at least: between 2012 and 2016 alone,
Booking.com managed to save 715 million euros in income tax by funneling the
profits booked elsewhere in Europe to the Netherlands, the AD reported two
years ago. France imposed Booking.com a (now paid) after-tax of EUR 356
million, while Turkey and Italy also say they have lost tens of millions of
euros in taxpayers' money. On top of that, Italian prosecutors launched an
investigation last year against Booking.com in connection with at least EUR 150
million in potentially unpaid VAT.
State aid to
Booking.com is all the more so because it owes the problems partly to itself.
Year after Booking year, Booking
Holdings, Booking.com's U.S. parent company, made multibillion-dollar profits –
nearly $5 billion in 2019. Still, the company entered the corona crisis with
more debt than cash. That's not least due to the $14 billion
Booking Holdings spent since 2018 buying their own shares – the
controversial stock buybacks that allow companies to jack up the price of
their shares, as well as their stock-paid bonuses.
Missed
opportunity
It is a missed
opportunity that the Dutch government has not set conditions on the NOW scheme,
except for a 20 percent loss of turnover. For example, theTrumpadministration-
which Booking.com can still knock on the door, prohibits emergency loan
recipients up to a year after the loan is repaid to buy back their own shares.
The Ministry of
Social Affairs says it has no grounds to refuse Booking's request. "It is a generic scheme, which
applies to all companies that are in trouble," says a spokesman. The UWV
already has 92 thousand applications, and if companies have to comply with too
many rules, it takes too long for the money to reach them, the ministry argues.
In addition, the scheme serves to protect employees, most of whom cannot do
much to their employer's financial union.
At the same time,
state aid to Booking.com undermines the solidarity of taxpayers, especially as
the company has so far shown little solidarity with corona-damaged hotel
owners. Saving KLM is already a great and controversial sacrifice, but how
indispensable for the Dutch economy is Booking.com? In the end, Booking.com is
little more than a pass-through between holidaymakers and the operators of
hotels and b&b’s, albeit against an average of 15 percent commission. In a
world without Booking.com, people probably won't be learning to go on holiday.
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