Economy
13:00, 04-Mar-2019
French tax plans on Internet companies could yield $550 mil per year
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A three percent tax on the French revenue of large Internet companies could
yield 500 million euros, or 550 million U.S. dollars, per year, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said
on Sunday.
Le Maire told Le Parisien newspaper the tax is aimed
at companies with worldwide digital revenue of at least 750 million euros and
French revenue of more than 25 million euros.
He said the tax would target
some 30 companies, mostly American, but also Chinese, German, Spanish and
British, as well as one French firm and several firms with French origins
that have been bought by foreign companies.
The paper listed Google,
Amazon, Facebook and Apple, the four so-called "GAFA" companies, but also
Uber, Airbnb, Booking and French online advertising specialist Criteo as
targets.
"A taxation system for the 21st century has to built on what has
value today, and that is data," Le Maire said.
He added it is also a matter
of fiscal justice, as the digital giants pay some 14 percentage points less
tax than European small-and-medium sized companies.
Fairer taxes are a key
demand of the "yellow vest" protests seen across France in the past three
months.
Le Maire said the tax would target platform companies that earn a
commission on putting companies in touch with customers.
Companies selling
their products on their own websites would not be targeted, such as French
retailer Darty which sells TVs and washing machines via its website.
But
companies such as Amazon earning money as a digital intermediary between a
producer and a client would have to pay.
The tax would also target the sales
of personal data for advertising purposes.
He will present a draft law to the
cabinet on Wednesday before it is presented to parliament.
France has led
a push for firms with significant digital revenue in the European Union to
pay more tax at source, but has made little headway as Germany is cool to the
idea, while member states with low corporate tax rates such as Luxembourg
and Ireland firmly oppose the proposal.
In an interview with weekly
Journal du Dimanche, Carrefour CEO Alexandre Bompard said it is high time to
end the fiscal imbalance between brick-and-mortar firms like his and
the U.S. and Chinese Internet platform companies.
"They pour their
products onto markets without even paying value-added tax, and hardly any
other tax at all, it is intolerable. On the same turnover they should pay the
same tax," he said.
(Top picture: French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire. /VCG Photo)
Source(s): Reuters