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| France is urging tech companies to pay digital taxes |
The French Treasury said it had sent notifications to large tech companies subject to what is known as a digital tax, forcing them to pay on time in December.
France suspended digital tax collection earlier this year, affecting companies like Facebook and Amazon, while the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) negotiates an overhaul of international tax rules.
The Treasury has long said that if negotiations are not decisive by then, it will collect a digital tax in December as planned, which is what happened when nearly 140 affected countries agreed to continue negotiations through mid-2021.
An official at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said: The company in question has received a request to pay insurance premiums for 2020.
Last year, France imposed a 3% tax on revenues from digital services generated by French companies (whose turnover exceeds 25 million euros and worldwide, 750 million euros).
Facebook said: Facebook's mission is to ensure compliance with all tax laws in the countries / regions in which it operates, adding that it has received tax invoices from the French authorities and Amazon has also received reminders to collect taxes from the French authorities and will comply.
Paris said that once an agreement is reached with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to modernize cross-border taxation rules in the era of e-commerce, it will withdraw taxes. In the age of e-commerce, large internet companies can make profits in low-tax countries regardless of where their customers are located.
Officials said negotiations stalled after the Trump administration was unwilling to sign a multilateral deal.
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire (Bruno Le Maire) said: We will start collecting digital taxes in mid-December because we have always made this clear to the US government.
He added: Our goal is still to reach the OECD agreement by the first months of 2021.
Experts point out that the President-elect of the United States (Biden) will agree to such a deal. They said: We don't know why Biden accepted certain powers to get American companies to pay more taxes in Europe without doing much good for the United States.