Imports, exports, and the fiction of fairness
By Jonathan Mason
If there is one principle that governs modern capitalism more faithfully than any other, it is that large corporations must never be taxed in proportion to the societies they exploit. Their slogans are familiar: “We comply with all laws,” and, “We
pay what we are legally required to.” And indeed they do. That is precisely the problem.
In the old days, taxes were paid where wealth was made. A brewer paid duties in the city where his beer was brewed and consumed. A merchant paid levies at the dock where his cargo arrived. But in the age of digital empires, profit flows not through ports and markets but through server farms and tax havens.
A person in Toronto books a hotel in Madrid through a server in California, routed through an algorithm in Ireland, invoiced in Luxembourg, and taxed — if at all — in a jurisdiction so compliant it might as well be an honorary subsidiary.
The multinationals call this tax efficiency. Economists call it base erosion. Any honest citizen might call it cheating. But the corporations prefer to present themselves as neutral machines operating within the laws provided. They do not write the rules, they insist — they merely follow them.
This is not really true. The rules were written in Geneva hotel lobbies and at Davos cocktail parties, where lobbyists from Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet sat alongside government officials, whispering the technicalities of treaty loopholes and urging deference in the name of innovation.
When loopholes are closed, they protest. When digital services taxes are introduced — designed to claw back a morsel of what has been spirited away — they cry discrimination. “We are being singled out,” they whine, as if being the largest, richest, and most aggressive tax avoiders in human history were a protected class.
Consider Ecuador’s new US$20 fee on every imported package under the “4×4” regime — covering small, low-value shipments from platforms like Temu or Amazon. It isn’t a percentage tax but a flat levy, applied uniformly to all such parcels, regardless of origin or company.
Alongside that, Ecuador imposes a foreign-currency export tax — a 5% charge on dollars spent abroad from Ecuadorian bank or credit card accounts — applied even to imports from overseas platforms. These measures are transparent, non-discriminatory, and aimed at preserving local industries and currency reserves. They reflect Ecuador’s sovereign right to regulate trade and protect its economy.
By contrast, when multinational digital giants declare, “We obey the law,” but then lobby fiercely whenever a government seizes its democratic duty to rewrite those laws, the moral contract is broken. A burglar who robs only unlocked houses still breaks the law. And a company that strips billions from a country while insisting it pays all dues — as defined by rules it helped craft — is not a responsible citizen, but a legalized parasite.
The question is not whether Canada, Ecuador, France, or India has the right to tax those who earn money within its borders. That is a question only for those who believe economic power should float above democratic constraint. The real question is whether any state still has the courage to assert sovereignty against financial empires that have grown larger, faster, and less accountable than the nations they now undermine.
To tax Amazon is not to punish success. It is to reassert the principle that the rule of law applies to those who shape it as well as those who suffer under it. If Bezos can afford a $30 million yacht wedding, he can afford to pay a fair share to the societies that made it possible. The alternative is not a free market. It is a rigged one, where corporations draft their own tax bills and democracies meekly rubber-stamp them.
The struggle over the digital services taxes in Canada and Europe — and measures like Ecuador’s package fee and export currency levy — is not about accounting. It is about colonial power and national sovereignty. And it should not be settled by accountants and lawyers, but by citizens and the governments they elect.
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