{"id":222480,"date":"2019-07-11T02:13:20","date_gmt":"2019-07-11T06:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=222480"},"modified":"2019-07-11T02:13:20","modified_gmt":"2019-07-11T06:13:20","slug":"trump-trade-representative-to-investigate-french-tech-tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/07\/11\/trump-trade-representative-to-investigate-french-tech-tax\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump trade representative to investigate French tech tax"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n
\"Google\"<\/a>
The tax primarily targets those that use consumers’ data to sell online advertising. The French Finance Ministry has estimated that the tax would raise about 500 million euros annually ($563 million) at first — but predicted that collections would rise \u201cquickly.\u201d (File Photo: Pawe\u0142 Czerwi\u0144ski\/Unsplash)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

WASHINGTON — The White House is launching an investigation into France’s proposed tax on internet\u00a0giants\u00a0like Google, Amazon and Facebook — a move that could lead to U.S. taxes on French imports.<\/p>\n

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer expressed concern that the tax, expected to be passed by the French Senate Thursday, \u201cunfairly targets American companies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lighthizer’s agency will investigate the tax under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 — the same provision the Trump administration used last year to probe China’s technology policies, leading to tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports.<\/p>\n

The French digital services tax would impose a 3% annual levy on French revenues of digital companies with yearly global sales worth more than 750 million euros ($844 million) and French revenue exceeding 25 million euros.<\/p>\n

France’s lower house of parliament approved the pioneering tax last week.<\/p>\n

The bill aims to stop multinationals from avoiding taxes by setting up headquarters in low-tax EU countries. Currently, the companies pay nearly no tax in countries where they have large sales like France.<\/p>\n

The tax primarily targets those that use consumers’ data to sell online advertising. The French Finance Ministry has estimated that the tax would raise about 500 million euros annually ($563 million) at first — but predicted that collections would rise \u201cquickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

The\u00a0tech\u00a0industry warns it could lead to higher costs for consumers. The levy could affect U.S. companies including Airbnb and Uber as well as those from China and Europe.<\/p>\n

Bob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, issued a statement welcoming Lighthizer’s investigation. \u201cDigital services taxes are an ill-disguised effort to target companies that are thought to be too powerful, too profitable, and too American,\u201d Atkinson said.<\/p>\n

The administration also got some bipartisan support from the top members of the Senate Finance Committee. In a joint statement, Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa, committee chairman, and Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon said: \u201cThe digital services tax that France and other European countries are pursuing is clearly protectionist and unfairly targets American companies in a way that will cost U.S. jobs and harm American workers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON — The White House is launching an investigation into France’s proposed tax on internet\u00a0giants\u00a0like Google, Amazon and Facebook — …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":222481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-paul-wiseman","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222480"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":222482,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222480\/revisions\/222482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}