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Text 2 For the first time on record, the number of advertising-specific jobs in the U. S. is dec...

Text 2
For the first time on record, the number of advertising-specific jobs in the U. S. is declining in the middle of an economic expansion, according to government data.
What's going on? It's certainly not a case of fewer advertisements. The typical American has gone from seeing about 500 ads each day in the 1970s to about 5,000 today, according to a common industry statistic. That is one corporate message for roughly every 10 seconds of waking life. Instead, the mysterious decline can be explained by two developments.
First, there are Facebook and Google. They are the largest advertising companies in the world-and, quite likely, the largest in the history of the world. Last year, 90 percent of the growth of the digital-advertising business went to just these two firms. Facebook and Google are so profitable because they use their enormous scale and data to deliver targeted advertising at a low cost. This has forced the world's large advertising firms to preserve their profitability through a series of mergers, accompanied by jobs cut.s in the name of efficiency.
The emergence of an advertising duopoly has coincided with the rise of "programmatic advertising," a term that essentially means "companies using algorithms to buy and place ads in those little boxes all over the internet. " As any Macl Men fan might intuit,advertising has long been a relationship-driven business, in which multimillion-dollar contracts are hammered out over one-on-one meetings, countless lunches, and even more-countless drinks. With programmatic technology, however, companies can buy access to specific audiences across several publishing platforms at once, bypassing the work of building relationships with each one. That process produces more ads and requires fewer people-or, at least, fewer traditional advertising jobs and more technical jobs.
Second, there is the merging of the advertising and entertainment businesses. As smartphone screens have edged out TV as the most important real estate for media, companies have invested more in "branded content"-corporate-sponsored media, such as an article or video, that resembles traditional entertainment more than it does traditional advertising. Some of the most prominent names in journalism, such as The New York Times , BuzzFeed, Vice , and The Atlantic , are owned by companies that have launched their own branded-content shops, which operate as stand-alone divisions. As many media companies have tried to become more like advertising companies, the value of the average "creative-account win," an ad-industry term for a new contract, has declined, falling by about 40 percent between 2016 and 2017.
So there are two major themes of the decline of advertising jobs, one that has to do with the companies that now create them and one that has to do with the way brands prefer to market themselves nowadays. In short, the future of the advertising business is being moved to technology companies managing ad networks and media companies making branded content-that is, away from the ad agencies.
27. With programmatic technology, Facebook and Google could
  • A. produce more ads and create more advertising jobs.
  • B. merge a series of large advertising companies.
  • C. deliver advertising to specific audiences at a low cost.
  • D. build relationships with publishing platforms one by one.

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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