{"id":177995,"date":"2019-04-06T07:08:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-06T12:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/04\/06\/im-with-france-on-this-one\/"},"modified":"2019-04-06T07:08:00","modified_gmt":"2019-04-06T12:08:00","slug":"im-with-france-on-this-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/04\/06\/im-with-france-on-this-one\/","title":{"rendered":"I&#8217;m With France on This One"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The French have instituted a digital services tax, and <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2019-04-france-digital-tax-anger.html\">the United states is unamused<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">France will stick to plans for a tax on digital giants such as Facebook and Apple, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Friday, despite angry opposition from Washington.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Last month, France unveiled draft legislation to set a three percent tax on digital advertising, the sale of personal data and other revenue for any technology company that earns more than 750 million euros ($841 million) worldwide each year.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The effort comes amid rising public outrage at the minimal tax paid by some of the world&#8217;s richest firms which base operations in jurisdictions that charge low rates.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">&#8220;We are determined to implement a tax on the largest digital companies to bring more justice and efficiency to the international tax system,&#8221; Le Maire said as he arrived in Bucharest for talks with his eurozone counterparts.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">&#8220;All states take their own free and sovereign decisions on tax matters,&#8221; Le Maire added.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Le Maire spoke just hours after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo raised his objections to the tax as he met French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian in Washington.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Pompeo said the tax would hurt US companies &#8220;and the French citizens who use them,&#8221; according to the State Department.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The US has opened several fronts against the tax, announcing in March that Washington was considering a complaint to the World Trade Organisation that the levy was discriminatory.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Tax evasion is central to the business models of many (most) of the internet giants, and all of the talk of changing the tax code to work with this is just that, talk.<\/p>\n<p>What France has enacted is a relatively elegant solution to the problem, and it address a problem present in more universal solutions:&nbsp; That aggressive lobbying by the tech firms, the economics term is &#8220;rent seeking&#8221;, would have watered down any proposal to meaninglessness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The French have instituted a digital services tax, and the United states is unamused: France will stick to plans for a tax on digital giants such as Facebook and Apple, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Friday, despite angry opposition from Washington.Last month, France unveiled draft legislation to set a three percent tax on &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[371,367,480],"class_list":["post-177995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-europe","tag-internet","tag-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177995"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177995\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}