If I didn&#x27;t buy an iPhone, I&#x27;d buy a different phone. The VAT would still be there. If I didn&#x27;t use Facebook I&#x27;d be using a different image sharing service, or chat service, or whatever. The VAT would still be there.<p>Because I have a budget to spend on entertainment, and various companies compete for that budget.<p><i>We</i> pay those taxes, Facebook&#x2F;Apple doesn&#x27;t &#x27;generate&#x27; anything, that money would be spent on a different entertainment. <i>We</i> pay income taxes, if we didn&#x27;t work for Facebook&#x2F;Apple, we would have to find a different job, perhaps start our own company, etc.<p>I want to make this super clear. Those taxes, including income taxes, are <i>our</i> contributions, not Facebook&#x27;s. The citizens are generating that money. If Facebook didn&#x27;t exist, there would be a company filling that void with an alternative entertainment which VAT would still be charged on.<p>Now, on the flip-side, it&#x27;s not entirely zero-sum and Facebook does increase the overall wealth. They are generating new markets, new growth, etc.<p>But is it by the percentage of money its extracting from the local economy? Of course not.  And worse still, that money&#x27;s sitting in an offshore account somewhere, not even flowing back into the US economy, because they&#x27;re waiting for a tax break. So instead of doing what it&#x27;s supposed to do, which is spur more growth, it&#x27;s doing the worst thing it can, which is being excluded from the world economy.