Slashdot Mirror
France Proposes Consideration of Tax On Data Taken Out of EU
An anonymous reader writes "France has proposed the European Union study taxing companies for transferring personal data outside of the bloc ... The proposal is part of a series France has made ahead of an EU summit next month ... Both transfers of data inside companies, such as sending information on employees from a European subsidiary to a non-EU parent, and between companies are affected. Transfer of personal data often happens when companies outsource certain tasks such as customer sales and help lines to offshore call centres."
You insesitive French clods: LEAVE DATA ALONE!
To enforce this you would need to inspect the contents of encrypted communications. On the same scale as the NSA inspects communications metadata.
Since users are the product, import/export taxes should apply...
I like it. Yes enforcement would be tough, but that's a totally separate thing. This supports privacy but it does much more than that. It supports actually being able to make laws. It's less about "transfer" and more about transfering outside of the legal jurisdiction.
More importantly, it attributes real value to personal data. That makes sense today, since it's sold as a currency already.
...does that count as "data"? How about DVDs?
So I guess if CERN sends Fermilab a 100 Terrabyte data set, that will get taxed as well?
Maybe they could tax every Linux distro someone downloads from an EU server...
Data protection in the EU already involves government agencies with enormous powers to intrude into private data. Enforcement of this "tax" means, in particular, that French government officials will have to have access to all communications of corporations. The primary goal is not to protect people's privacy, it's obviously to spy on foreign companies and to invade their privacy.
What's going on is that EU citizens have little privacy within the EU; European governments can get at any data on servers within their own countries with near impunity. Therefore EU governments hate it when EU citizens store their data on US servers because they can't easily get at it. That's why they have embarked on a campaign to demonize US companies and to put legal restrictions in place for data moving out of the country. It has nothing to do with protecting privacy and everything with invading it.
Mon oeil.
If legal data transfers are taxed, only illegal data transfers... won't be taxed.
OK, it needs some work.
Thank you.
So when you work in America and you manage employees in the UK, you now can't know any personal details on them without paying tax? How do you manage their salary? Their vacation time? How do they request parental leave? Now what - this is all hands off, with some kind of delegate relationship? How do you run your business this way.
Do you know how common this kind of setup is in any multi-national corporation? Reporting chains are not restricted to single countries.
This kind of thinking is very isolationist.
TFA says:
> [Companies pay their taxes] inEuropean countries which have lower corporate tax rates, such as Ireland whereGoogle has its European headquarters. ... so let's make our taxes higher and more complex. ... have high taxes?!?!
They put their headquarters in Ireland so they can pay their taxes in Ireland because Ireland has low taxes.
If you want them to locate (and pay taxes) in your country, you should
The French should also tax semen left by their countrymen in other country's prostitutes, since it is effectively mass data storage transfered for business purposes.
Do you think they could get an exception on this tax?
none
More importantly, it attributes real value to personal data. That makes sense today, since it's sold as a currency already.
These laws are about protecting domestic jobs not about protecting your personal privacy. Its an attempt to keep the processing of information in the EU. The problem is it is applicable only to personal data, businesses already work around this by anonymizing data. Names, addresses, social security numbers / national ID numbers and other personally identifiable information (PII) are replaced with codes only the domestic organization knows. Thus the data transferred outside the EU has no PII. When the processed information is returned to the EU the codes are replaced with the PII.
Typical taxing behaviour from the Great South of Europe which France seems to aspire to be part of. Political isms seem to be irrelevant to this tendency while weak national identity (The French will surely love this) and resulting bad governance are. Double taxing is the new black!
Note it is coucjed as sticking it to foreign companies, and helping the local French people, when it is actually another attempt to force the French to shoulder even more unnecessary financial burdens and make them more anti-competitive.
Basically: We politicians pretend this kicks the rich in the balls when they will just shift the burden onto you.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Well, yea but, how can we make this Obama's fault?
Haiti is a French-speaking country that was economically crippled because it instituted (among other thigs) export taxes.
Most free market people agree import taxes are bad (see protectionism), but export taxes all kinds of crazy.
Export taxes say, "Don't buy anything from us!". And the money goes elsewhere.
Data exported from the EU already has to maintain certain data protection standards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Safe_Harbor_Privacy_Principles though one suspects the law may not be well enforced. All this does is add a tax on top, which is, relatively, a detail
Just what we need. Incentivise the government to sell our data.
"We're short on tax revenue. I know, let's sell some data to the NSA"
I wouldn't mind if they would tax the NSA and GCHQ for taking data out.
All billings end up in Israel of all places (wtf?)
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
"Transfer of personal data often happens when companies outsource certain tasks such as customer sales and help lines to offshore call centres."
Also when facebook, google, yahoo etc sends personal data to US from Europe. I think the excerpt is very capitalistic written and not from a privacy perspective. The article should not be formulated like that on Slashdot, should focus on the technology and the great privacy implications.
We are the NSA.
Our chief weapons are Fear, Theft, and Stealing.
We repeat the last two just because we can.
Now go home you silly EU kniggits!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Does the definition of "taking data out" include web crawling? That's all it would take.
When I see this sort of thing my cynical sensor goes to eleven. If the situation was reversed, and Google was in France, how would the French react to a similar data tax in the US? They would bitch so loudly that you could hear it standing on the Atlantic coast of Florida.
Why is Snark Required?
French is already a seondary language in decline. Bye, bye.
Thanks, I just need to clean the freedom fries out of my keyboard more often.