Austrian Chancellor Unleashes on Multinational Globalists: Sausage Stands Pay More Taxes Than Google, Facebook, Starbucks and Amazon

Most people I know are outraged over the EU fining Apple for back taxes. But there’s another side to the story, one that involves insidiously fucked up global titans who slosh money around from country to country, never repatriating back to their home country, all in an effort to avoid paying any taxes. While the EU decision was stupid and punitive, the action by Apple to keep over $200 billion overseas in order to AVOID paying U.S. taxes is equally stupid and also absurd.

The Chancellor of Austria unleashed a tirade against a handful of American companies, who are profiting handsomely in his country, tax free.

Multinationals like coffee chain Starbucks (SBUX.O) and online retailer Amazon (AMZN.O) pay less tax in Austria than one of the country’s tiny sausage stands, the republic’s center-left chancellor lamented in an interview published on Friday.

Chancellor Christian Kern, head of the Social Democrats and of the centrist coalition government, also criticized internet giants Google (GOOGL.O) and Facebook (FB.O), saying that if they paid more tax subsidies for print media could increase.

“Every Viennese cafe, every sausage stand pays more tax in Austria than a multinational corporation,” Kern was quoted as saying in an interview with newspaper Der Standard, invoking two potent symbols of the Austrian capital’s food culture.

“That goes for Starbucks, Amazon and other companies,” he said, praising the European Commission’s ruling this week that Apple (AAPL.O) should pay up to 13 billion euros ($14.5 billion) in taxes plus interest to Ireland because a special scheme to route profits through that country was illegal state aid.

Kern criticized EU states with low-tax regimes that have lured multinationals – and come under scrutiny from Brussels.

“What Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg or Malta are doing here lacks solidarity towards the rest of the European economy,” he said.

He stopped short of saying that Facebook and Google would have to pay more tax but underlined their significant sales in Austria, which he estimated at more than 100 million euros each, and their relatively small numbers of employees – a “good dozen” for Google and “allegedly even fewer” for Facebook.

“They massively suck up the advertising volume that comes out of the economy but pay neither corporation tax nor advertising duty in Austria,” said Kern, who became chancellor in May.