France announced on Thursday that it reached a deal with the United States on an international solution to the digital tax issue.
“This working basis should mean that we can get to work on the details next week to look at the different options for the taxation of digital activities,” said France Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire.
Instead of focusing on taxing big tech companies, like Facebook and Google, France agreed to work with the United States on rewriting international tax rules for the digital age.
Le Maire and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin hammered out a series of written proposals that they’ll discuss with over 100 governments next week at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Other countries, however, like the UK, have said they’ll roll out their digital tax this year, before reaching an international solution.
“We plan to go ahead with our digital services tax in April,” said UK Finance Minister Sajid Javid.” [I]t is a proportionate tax and it is a tax that is deliberately designed as a temporary tax. So it will fall away once there is an international solution.”
France had also implemented its digital tax, but later suspended it until the end of 2020 after the United States threatened to impose tariffs on French goods.
