The Turkish Finance Ministry has sped up its work to collect taxes from the online advertising market. The initiative focuses on collecting taxes from various foreign-based websites, which have considerable online advertising revenues, like Facebook and Twitter.

“Every enterprise that earns money in Turkey will pay tax in Turkey, including Facebook, Twitter and others. The online advertising market has now earned $1 billion, and 70 percent of the income goes abroad without being taxed,”Turkish Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek said yesterday. Şimşek added that the ministry is about to finalize the related regulation draft to ensure the taxation of online advertisement revenue that is earned in Turkey, regardless of the origin of the company.

Online search engines and social networks have earned more and more from their online advertisement services. Such websites generally withdraw the online advertisement payments by credit card and the money goes abroad instantly without being taxed, due to the commonly signed intergovernmental agreements by many countries to prevent double-taxation for companies. This is also case for Turkey.

Google earns $45 billion annually from its online ads, around $22 billion to 23 billion of this is from Europe but the exact number for Turkey is not known.
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/twitter-facebook-to-pay-tax-in-turkey.aspx?pageID=238&nid=46746&NewsCatID=344
[size=16pt]
Could same apply in Nigeria?[/size]

There is steady light in Turkey. Could same apply in Nigeria?

GraphicsPlus: There is steady light in Turkey. Could same apply in Nigeria?

Fact is they're making money in and from Nigerians.

I'd be interested to know how this would be enforced.

i dont think such things can happend in nigeria as well as african

Do they have a physical presence in Nigeria? If they pay tax to Nigeria then they will pay tax to every country in the world except North Korea.

Afam4eva: Do they have a physical presence in Nigeria? If they pay tax to Nigeria then they will pay tax to every country in the world except North Korea.

Since they don't need any physical presence to make money from Nigeria, they also don't need that to pay their taxes.

Brand_new:
Since they don't need any physical presence to make money from Nigeria, they also don't need that to pay their taxes.

You only pay tax for service been rendered to you. What service is the Nigerian government rendering to Twitter and facebook?

Afam4eva:
You only pay tax for service been rendered to you. What service is the Nigerian government rendering to Twitter and facebook?

The Nigerian internet space ofcourse.

Question is, how much service do an average Nigerian get from it's government. I guess that's a topic for the politics section.
Point is, they make money from Nigerians hence they should pay their Tax.

--

Brand_new:
The Nigerian internet space ofcourse.

Question is, how much service do an average Nigeroan get from it's government. I guess that's a topic for the politics section.
Point is, they make money from Nigerians hence they should pay their Tax.

They're only meant to pay tax to the country where they're beaming from. There's no such thing as NIKgerian internet space in the case of tax.

Facebook and Twitter make money from Nigeria and not Nigeria as a country.

--

Short answer is NO.

Truely this is a joke. Do some of the top citizens in this country pay tax?

I'm ambivalent on the issue. On one hand they may be making money from Nigerians. OTOH I feel government's collecting tax from social networks because of their ad revenue may herald government intrusion into the cyberspace.

Sincere Bigot: --

Actually, it ought to. Nairaland earns revenue now from its ads. It didn't have to when it was just a forum. It is now a business and every nigerian business ought to ppay tax

so they are gonna start taxing seun from what he worked hard to get not so cool

YES! When nairaland starts paying tax in u.s.a , u.k, ireland and so on.

Facebook and twitter paying ? Mehnnn I don't know O° but allow me ask their third brother GOOGLE....wait I dey come

I will like to see how this argument goes

Tax wetin?? While in principle this is a financially sound idea, but in actuality, our politicians will end up chopping more money from this tax windfall

saintvalx: Truely this is a joke. Do some of the top citizens in this country pay tax?

Your head is correct jare..case closed!!

seun stop hidding my post. I take God beg you

nairaland go dey pay tax abi wetin u talk? must evething be taxed? i see someone is jealous of someone making money onlne

YES.

FB, Google, MS, Yahoo, all of them should pay taxes to their entities. After all, foreign companies operating in the U.S. pays taxes to IRS.

Let me get this straight, so this is the new trend now? that Social sites should pay tax...
Issokay!!! maybe they'll buy and launch a new satellite for us then....

NO sir! they shouldn't pay.

Afam4eva:
They're only meant to pay tax to the country where they're beaming from. There's no such thing as NIKgerian internet space in the case of tax.

Facebook and Twitter make money from Nigeria and not Nigeria as a country.

Granted that you can't tax transactions done over the cyberspace unless there's physical presence (that's why Amazon and some others don't), but that's not what we're talking about. Advertising revenues from Nigerian advertiser that go to Google and Yahoo and Facebook and Twitter and their likes should be taxed. It's taxable revenue/income (after expenses).

manny4life:

Granted that you can't tax transactions done over the cyberspace unless there's physical presence (that's why Amazon and some others don't), but that's not what we're talking about. Advertising revenues from Nigerian advertiser that go to Google and Yahoo and Facebook and Twitter and their likes should be taxed. It's taxable revenue/income (after expenses).

Its not taxable because there's no presence. If all countries adopt this method, nairaland would close within a day because I'm pretty sure someone in Turkey visits nairaland daily.

The only way it can happen is to tax nigerians that want to advertise on facebook or twitter. the nigerian govt can partner with mastercard or visacard for that. btw nigerians web developers are good enough to have their own social network that wld attract americans to come and advertise in. why must everything worldwide thing be owned by americans?

manny4life:

Granted that you can't tax transactions done over the cyberspace unless there's physical presence (that's why Amazon and some others don't), but that's not what we're talking about. Advertising revenues from Nigerian advertiser that go to Google and Yahoo and Facebook and Twitter and their likes should be taxed. It's taxable revenue/income (after expenses).

I still don't see how it's possible...It's like Nigeria taxing a Walmart store in America because a Nigerian travelled to America physically to buy a good from their store.

A-ZeD:

Its not taxable because there's no presence. If all countries adopt this method, nairaland would close within a day because I'm pretty sure someone in Turkey visits nairaland daily.

You misunderstand what I write.

NL cannot pay taxes as you put it because NL is an entity but NL does have a "physical presence" of operation, i.e. if it were to engage in sales of products as it is governed by the rule of commerce. NL wouldn't close because someone visited the site, however, while no one has sole ownership of the cyber transaction, cyber transactions fall under local/international jurisdictions, thus NL should pay Turkish govt taxes if it decides to accept advertising revenues from Turkish advertisers. The rule of no physical presence shouldn't apply, the U.S. isn't the only country good for taxing their companies both ways - incoming and outgoing revenues.

Afam4eva:
I still don't see how it's possible...It's like Nigeria taxing a Walmart store in America because a Nigerian travelled to America physically to buy a good from their store.

First, Walmart is an American entity, however, believe it or not, IRS taxes Walmart and it's subsidiaries that have revenues outside the United States when they file their consolidated tax returns. Perfect case was Tim Cook of Apple who testified in Congress sometimes this week (Congress is dealing with Foreign Tax Codes and laws governing taxation), believe it or not, Apple pays their standard taxes when you Afam buys an iPhone, when a Chinko purchases an iPad, when a German purchases iMac or whatever. They pay these taxes, so I don't see why a Nigerian or Turkish govt cannot tax American companies who accepts revenues from their local entities.