After the United Kingdom, France is now also introducing a digital tax measure aimed at large American tech companies. This was announced today by the French Finance Minister at a press conference. Bruno le Maire stated that the measure would apply from 1 January.
It is the hope of the French government to raise EUR 500 million with the measure next year. According to Minister Le Maire, the aim of this measure is to ensure that the taxes paid by large companies such as Amazon and Google are aligned with those of other companies. The European Commission estimates that large tech companies pay 14% less tax on their profits than traditional companies. Sometimes even less than that.
Complementary measures
Across Europe, governments are currently looking at tax measures for the world’s tech giants. The companies often have complex tax structures, in which they shift a lot of turnover, profit and costs in order to ultimately pay minimum taxes. Where national taxes for these companies have already been introduced in France and the United Kingdom, the European Union is now looking at that as well.
The 28 Member States of the European Union were shortly to be proposed to implement a Europe-wide measure. But that’s not easy, because small countries such as Ireland are obstructive. That is why Le Maire says that he only wants to try to introduce a European tax measure for the digital giants for a few months now. If European countries do not take their responsibilities for a measure on the GAFA [Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple], we will do it at national level in 2019.
More and more pressure
If the European Union does not come up with a measure of its own, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development may still come up with a similar policy. It is made up of 36 Member States, which together account for 42% of the world’s gross national product, and want to put forward proposals for tax measures next year.
Incidentally, there is more and more pressure on tech companies. For example, investigations are currently underway into the competition policy of both Facebook and Google. In addition, when it comes to the way in which they handle personal data, there is more and more pressure on the companies.
This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.
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