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Text l Priests, teachers and parents have for generations advised their wards io think twice bef...

Text l
Priests, teachers and parents have for generations advised their wards io think twice before speaking, to count to ten when angry and to get a good night's sleep before making big decisions.
Social networks care little for seconcl thoughts. Services such as Facebook and Twitter are built to maximise "virality", making it irresistible to share, like and retweet things. They are getting better at it: fully half of the 40 most-retweeted tweets clate from January last year.
Starting this month, however, users of WhatsApp, a messaging service owned by Facebook, will find it harder to spread content. They will no longer be able to forward messages to more than 20 0thers in one go, down from more than 100. The goal is not to prevent people from sharing information-only to get users to think about what they are passing on. It Js an idea other platforms should consider copying.
Skeptics point out that WhatsApp can afford to hinder the spread of information on its platform because it does not rely on the sale of adverrisements to make money. Slowing down sharing would be more damaging to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, which make money by keeping users on their sites and showing them ads. Their shareholders would surely refuse anything that lessens engagement.
Sure enough, Facebook's shares fell by 23% in after-hours trading, partly because Mark Zuckerberg, its boss, said that its priority would be to get users to interact more with each other, not to promote viral content. Yet the short-term pain caused by a decline in virality may be in the long-term interests of the social networks. Fake news and concerns about cligital addiction, among other things, have already damaged the reputations of tech platforms. Moves to slow sharing could lielp see off harsh action by regulators and lawmakers.
They could also improve its service. Instagram, a photo-sharing social network also owned by Facebook, shows that you can be successful without resorting to virality. It offers no sharing options and does not allow links but boasts more than a billion monthly users. It has remained relatively free of misinformation. Facebook does not break out Instagram's revenues, but it is thought to make money.
The need to constrain virality is becoming ever more urgent. About half the world uses the internet today. The next 3.8bn users to go online will be poorer and less familiar with media. The examples of deceptions, misinformation and violence in India suggest that the capacity to manipulate people online is even greater when they first gain access to cligital communications.
Small changes can have big effects: social networks have become expert at making their services compulsive by adjusting shades of blue and the size of buttons. They have the knowledge and the tools to maximise the sharing of information. That gives them the power to limit its virality, too.
23. Skeptics hold that slowing down sharing would
  • A. fail to curb virality
  • B. be bad for users.
  • C. do no good to advertisers.
  • D. go against shareholders.
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Text 1
The European Commission's proposed tax on digital services is intended to make companies such as Google and Uber pay more. The idea is that such firms are gaming the rules at the expense of other taxpayers. The issue is real and needs to be addressed - but the answer under discussion breaks with both established international practice and plain common sense.
Formal talks on the plan are due to start this week. The commission is calling for a 3 percent tax on the turnover of large digital enterprises - those with EU digital revenues over 50 million euros and total global revenues of over 750 million euros. About half the companies affected would be American, the EU estimates.
The commission says it has been left with little choice. The value generated by digital companies doesn't require a physical presence, making them harder to rax. Digital businesses arrange their affairs to exploit this: They allocate income to low-tax jurisdictions and, according to officials, end up paying an effective tax of roughly 10 percent of profits, less than half of the burden carried by traditional businesses.
Officials acknowledge that the right solution is a thorough overhaul of the corporate tax code, especially as it affects international firms selling digital services - and that this should be done not unilaterally but in cooperation with other countries, notably the U. S. Efforts are in fact underway, but progress has been slow, and EU officials have chosen to do something, anything, as soon as possible.
Doing nothing would be better than this. For a start, the plan wouldn't raise much revenue - a meager 5 billion euros each year. And this supposedly fairer tax would bring abnormal results. For instance, companies such as Uber that don't make money will have a new cost to absorb; highly profitable firms with market power, such as Facebook, will be able to pass the tax on to their consumers. Small startups will be exempt from the new tax - unless they're acquired by larger companies. That will discourage consolidations. And the proposal as it stands may tax more activities than intended: Some financial services, for example, seem to be within its scope In its zeal to tax digital enterprises, the commission departs from many of its own stated principles. Its plan would probably require accessing individual, not just anonymized, user data. This runs counter to the EU's strict new rules on privacy, coming into force next month.
Efforts to design a multinational solution need to be stepped up, not set aside. The goal should be a fair, multilateral framework that recognizes the complexity of the new digital economy while respecting the sovereignty of nations to set their own tax policy. That's an international challenge demanding an international solution.
21. According to the first two paragraphs, the EU digital tax proposal
  • A. protects European industries from competition.
  • B. aims to updaic esiablished international practice.
  • C. is a blow to top digital companies.
  • D. binds only America's tech giants.
2 单选题 0分
Text 1
The European Commission's proposed tax on digital services is intended to make companies such as Google and Uber pay more. The idea is that such firms are gaming the rules at the expense of other taxpayers. The issue is real and needs to be addressed - but the answer under discussion breaks with both established international practice and plain common sense.
Formal talks on the plan are due to start this week. The commission is calling for a 3 percent tax on the turnover of large digital enterprises - those with EU digital revenues over 50 million euros and total global revenues of over 750 million euros. About half the companies affected would be American, the EU estimates.
The commission says it has been left with little choice. The value generated by digital companies doesn't require a physical presence, making them harder to rax. Digital businesses arrange their affairs to exploit this: They allocate income to low-tax jurisdictions and, according to officials, end up paying an effective tax of roughly 10 percent of profits, less than half of the burden carried by traditional businesses.
Officials acknowledge that the right solution is a thorough overhaul of the corporate tax code, especially as it affects international firms selling digital services - and that this should be done not unilaterally but in cooperation with other countries, notably the U. S. Efforts are in fact underway, but progress has been slow, and EU officials have chosen to do something, anything, as soon as possible.
Doing nothing would be better than this. For a start, the plan wouldn't raise much revenue - a meager 5 billion euros each year. And this supposedly fairer tax would bring abnormal results. For instance, companies such as Uber that don't make money will have a new cost to absorb; highly profitable firms with market power, such as Facebook, will be able to pass the tax on to their consumers. Small startups will be exempt from the new tax - unless they're acquired by larger companies. That will discourage consolidations. And the proposal as it stands may tax more activities than intended: Some financial services, for example, seem to be within its scope In its zeal to tax digital enterprises, the commission departs from many of its own stated principles. Its plan would probably require accessing individual, not just anonymized, user data. This runs counter to the EU's strict new rules on privacy, coming into force next month.
Efforts to design a multinational solution need to be stepped up, not set aside. The goal should be a fair, multilateral framework that recognizes the complexity of the new digital economy while respecting the sovereignty of nations to set their own tax policy. That's an international challenge demanding an international solution.
22. To which of the following would EU officials most probably agree?
  • A. Traditional business lax cut is necessary in the digital era.
  • B. The pace of global corporate tax reform is too slow.
  • C. Europe should reduce the number of Iow-tax jurisdictions.
  • D. Corporate tax code is being revised in favor of the U, S.
3 单选题 0分
Text 1
The European Commission's proposed tax on digital services is intended to make companies such as Google and Uber pay more. The idea is that such firms are gaming the rules at the expense of other taxpayers. The issue is real and needs to be addressed - but the answer under discussion breaks with both established international practice and plain common sense.
Formal talks on the plan are due to start this week. The commission is calling for a 3 percent tax on the turnover of large digital enterprises - those with EU digital revenues over 50 million euros and total global revenues of over 750 million euros. About half the companies affected would be American, the EU estimates.
The commission says it has been left with little choice. The value generated by digital companies doesn't require a physical presence, making them harder to rax. Digital businesses arrange their affairs to exploit this: They allocate income to low-tax jurisdictions and, according to officials, end up paying an effective tax of roughly 10 percent of profits, less than half of the burden carried by traditional businesses.
Officials acknowledge that the right solution is a thorough overhaul of the corporate tax code, especially as it affects international firms selling digital services - and that this should be done not unilaterally but in cooperation with other countries, notably the U. S. Efforts are in fact underway, but progress has been slow, and EU officials have chosen to do something, anything, as soon as possible.
Doing nothing would be better than this. For a start, the plan wouldn't raise much revenue - a meager 5 billion euros each year. And this supposedly fairer tax would bring abnormal results. For instance, companies such as Uber that don't make money will have a new cost to absorb; highly profitable firms with market power, such as Facebook, will be able to pass the tax on to their consumers. Small startups will be exempt from the new tax - unless they're acquired by larger companies. That will discourage consolidations. And the proposal as it stands may tax more activities than intended: Some financial services, for example, seem to be within its scope In its zeal to tax digital enterprises, the commission departs from many of its own stated principles. Its plan would probably require accessing individual, not just anonymized, user data. This runs counter to the EU's strict new rules on privacy, coming into force next month.
Efforts to design a multinational solution need to be stepped up, not set aside. The goal should be a fair, multilateral framework that recognizes the complexity of the new digital economy while respecting the sovereignty of nations to set their own tax policy. That's an international challenge demanding an international solution.
23. The author believes ihat the commission's tax plan would
  • A. ultimately harm consumers
  • B. benefit some financial services
  • C. help curb monopoly power
  • D. force privacy rules to be modified.
4 单选题 0分
Text 1
The European Commission's proposed tax on digital services is intended to make companies such as Google and Uber pay more. The idea is that such firms are gaming the rules at the expense of other taxpayers. The issue is real and needs to be addressed - but the answer under discussion breaks with both established international practice and plain common sense.
Formal talks on the plan are due to start this week. The commission is calling for a 3 percent tax on the turnover of large digital enterprises - those with EU digital revenues over 50 million euros and total global revenues of over 750 million euros. About half the companies affected would be American, the EU estimates.
The commission says it has been left with little choice. The value generated by digital companies doesn't require a physical presence, making them harder to rax. Digital businesses arrange their affairs to exploit this: They allocate income to low-tax jurisdictions and, according to officials, end up paying an effective tax of roughly 10 percent of profits, less than half of the burden carried by traditional businesses.
Officials acknowledge that the right solution is a thorough overhaul of the corporate tax code, especially as it affects international firms selling digital services - and that this should be done not unilaterally but in cooperation with other countries, notably the U. S. Efforts are in fact underway, but progress has been slow, and EU officials have chosen to do something, anything, as soon as possible.
Doing nothing would be better than this. For a start, the plan wouldn't raise much revenue - a meager 5 billion euros each year. And this supposedly fairer tax would bring abnormal results. For instance, companies such as Uber that don't make money will have a new cost to absorb; highly profitable firms with market power, such as Facebook, will be able to pass the tax on to their consumers. Small startups will be exempt from the new tax - unless they're acquired by larger companies. That will discourage consolidations. And the proposal as it stands may tax more activities than intended: Some financial services, for example, seem to be within its scope In its zeal to tax digital enterprises, the commission departs from many of its own stated principles. Its plan would probably require accessing individual, not just anonymized, user data. This runs counter to the EU's strict new rules on privacy, coming into force next month.
Efforts to design a multinational solution need to be stepped up, not set aside. The goal should be a fair, multilateral framework that recognizes the complexity of the new digital economy while respecting the sovereignty of nations to set their own tax policy. That's an international challenge demanding an international solution.
24. What is the ultimate goal that digital tax legislation should pursue?
  • A. Efficient unilateral solution.s.
  • B. Simplified corporate tax systems
  • C. A global cooperative approach
  • D. An anti-tax avoidance package
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