EU prepares revenue-based tax on US tech giants

[nitpicker]

http://www.dw.com/en/eu-prepares-revenue-based-tax-on-us-tech-giants/a-43009838

EU prepares revenue-based tax on US tech giants
Date 16.03.2018

The European Commission is to unveil plans for a digital tax on big US tech companies. The move is aimed at recovering billions of euros from multinationals that divert their earnings to low-tax nations. According to a draft plan, Brussels proposes big tech companies should be taxed on overall revenue in the EU and not just on their profits, at a rate of around 3 percent.
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The new EU tax plan would target companies with global annual turnover above €750 million ($924 million), such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, Airbnb and Uber. Smaller startups that struggle to compete with the giants would be spared, as would firms like Netflix, which depend on subscriptions.

Under current EU law, firms can choose to book their income in any member state of the bloc, prompting them to pick low-tax nations like Ireland, the Netherlands or Luxembourg. This has meant that other nations in the bloc have missed out on tax revenue from big US firms even though sales in those countries may account for a bigger share of the earnings.

The new draft plan says that revenue from the digital tax would be fairly distributed to where the companies in question actually operate according to the level of activity in those nations and not the level of booked profit.

Brussels looks set to unveil the plan on the eve of a March 22 EU summit, and ahead of an April G20 meeting of the world's most developed nations.
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[BigmanPigman]

1. Sounds good to me.

[stuffmatters]

2. Excellent. Make these free loading corps pay their fair share.

Also liked the Ca point of sale tax for large corps that was proposed as a major source of revenue towards financing Ca Medicare for All.

[OnDoutside]

3. I'm not sure this will go anywhere. Each EU state has an option out on tax.