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| Europe |
| France to impose new tax on internet and tech giants |
| 2018-12-18 |
| [Aljazeera] Paris estimates it will make $570m in 2019 by introducing a new levy on large internet and tech firms from January 1. France has said it will impose its own tax on large internet and technology companies from January 1. French finance minister Bruno Le Maire said at a news conference in Paris on Monday that the measure would be introduced "whatever happens". "It will be for the whole of 2019 for an amount that we estimate at 500 million euros [$570 million]," he said. Monday's move could help Paris close a multibillion-euro hole in the 2019 budget left by President Emmanuel Macron's new measures for low-income families, which were introduced last week to appease the "yellow vest" protesters. The big tech lash: Tech giants under scrutiny France has long been pushing hard for a so-called "GAFA tax" - named after Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon - to ensure the global giants pay a fair share of taxes on their massive business operations in the European Union. The low tax rates paid by the US tech giants in the EU has repeatedly caused anger among voters in many European countries, but the 28-member bloc is divided on how to tackle the issue. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #9 Google alone has over 130 billion revenue, its share of that one half billion is really going to hurt. |
| Posted by: KBK 2018-12-18 23:30 |
| #8 Notice how journalists writes fake news. The taxes are on costumers of those. |
| Posted by: Spanky Whuter1088 2018-12-18 13:25 |
| #7 Heck, just seize the 'means of production' and nationalize it all. What could go wrong? /sarc |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2018-12-18 11:08 |
| #6 ...France has been technically bankrupt since 2000. With interest rates increasing the government has got desperate and has implemented all sorts of regressive taxes that hit the masses instead off looking at reducing the government's spending. I thought I was reading about France in 1789 for a second. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2018-12-18 10:43 |
| #5 A previous article points out that France has been technically bankrupt since 2000. With interest rates increasing the government has got desperate and has implemented all sorts of regressive taxes that hit the masses instead off looking at reducing the government's spending. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2018-12-18 10:26 |
| #4 Are voters "angered" by the low rates, or are politicians just lusting for the cash? |
| Posted by: Rob Crawford 2018-12-18 08:02 |
| #3 Next they will be taxing text messages. |
| Posted by: Ebbavirt Clunk4147 2018-12-18 07:42 |
| #2 And like all business taxes, it gets passed thru to the consumer. In the case of "free" stuff like gurgle and fartbook, that means they have to hike their monetization of your personal information. Winning! |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2018-12-18 07:28 |
| #1 The tax & grab crowd doesn't miss an opportunity to stick it to somebody... |
| Posted by: Raj 2018-12-18 07:07 |