So, here’s something that’s news because there’s no news about it.
On November 19, TechCrunch reported that Google was being investigated by the Chinese government for a number of tax issues, all of which were too difficult for me to understand or techCrunch to analyze or give perspective on. My initial thought was that this was simply a follow up shot across Google’s bow.
If you remember a few months back, all the U.S. search engines in China had their traffic redirected to sina.com, in what many said was a response to President Bush meeting with the Dali Lama. So now after a "tip" from someone, the Chinese government is going to fine and/or punish Google for some allegedly shaky financial bookkeeping.
Now if you ask me, when a company has more money than it knows what to do with, cheating a few bucks in taxes in a country it desperately wants to do business in would be downright foolish. I simply can’t believe Google would purposely do anything improper in dealing with Byzantine Chinese tax laws when they desperately want to do business in this market. It simply makes no sense for Google to try to cheat the Chinese government out of less than what one of their GM’s is worth in stock options.
But the bigger question for me is, why is TechCrunch the most respected news outlet covering this? On a search on the terms – Google Tax China – there’s no WSJ, New York Times or even anything from the Bay Area papers. Why isn’t anyone writing about the Chinese accusing Google of tax improprieties? Is it part of some U.S. mandate that "We will not question the Chinese government?"
