The French Senate has rubber-stamped legislation that will see a new tax levied on the gross revenues generated from commissions by large, mostly overseas, digital intermediary companies on the sales made by their third party clients to French users. This will mean that businesses like Amazon, Google, Uber and Facebook can no longer avoid paying tax in France by diverting revenues to other lower-tax countries, or through the overseas parent applying onerous ‘management charges’ in order to suppress local market profitability and liability for tax. If France succeeds in making the businesses pay, other countries are expected to follow suit.
It is being suggested that France could reap some EUR 500 million a year by collecting the new tax.
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