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France Will Tax Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon In New Year (qz.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: France won't wait on the rest of the European Union to start taxing big tech. French finance minister Bruno Le Maire says the country will move ahead with a new tax on Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon starting Jan. 1, 2019. The tax is expected to raise $570 million in 2019. France and Germany had originally pushed for an EU-wide 3% tax on big tech firms' online revenues, in part to prevent companies like Apple from sheltering their profits in countries with the lowest tax rates. The deal, which required the support of all 28 EU states, appeared to crumble earlier this month, with opposition from countries including Ireland, home to the European headquarters of Google and Apple.

France and Germany attempted to salvage the deal by scaling it back to a 3% tax on ad sales from tech giants. That would effectively limit the tax to Google and Facebook, excluding companies like Airbnb and Spotify that might have been harder hit under the initial proposal. In the meantime, France is moving ahead with its own tax on Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon, which are collectively known in the region as GAFA. "The tax will be introduced whatever happens on 1 January and it will be for the whole of 2019 for an amount that we estimate at [$570 million]," Le Maire said at a press conference in Paris, the Guardian reported today (Dec. 17).

2 of 138 comments (clear)

  1. Re:france is broke by colonslash · · Score: 0, Troll

    > they are doing something about it
    Yes, they're working 35 hour weeks with 8 weeks of vacation; they're taxing the US instead of working.

  2. Re:france is broke by haruchai · · Score: 0, Troll

    > they are doing something about it
    Yes, they're working 35 hour weeks with 8 weeks of vacation; they're taxing the US instead of working.

    They should be more like the Greatest President the World has EVER seen and watch more TV, spend more time on Twitter while on the shitter & the golf course and Make France Great Again.
    And Americans won't be paying this tax, it'll be paid by a company making money from French citizens

    --
    Pain is merely failure leaving the body