In France, propose to introduce a tax on the collection of user data

France is looking for new ways to raise funds and is disappointed that American technology companies leading the digital economy remain inaccessible to French fiscal authorities. That is why the government proposes to introduce a tax on the collection of data on users.

The idea surfaced on Friday in a report prepared by President Francois Hollande. According to him, companies actively earning in the French advertising market, such as Google, Amazon and Facebook, should leave an adequate part of the profits in the form of taxes.
These companies receive a huge amount of information about their users, process and use them for their own purposes. In particular, data is used to target advertising to a group of users according to certain parameters. The document states that personal data is used as a “raw material” for the digital economy. Moreover, users themselves openly share this data. Such openness of information allows Internet companies to earn billions of dollars on targeted advertising, which is estimated much more than a banner.
"These data have different meanings, poorly reflected in economics and official statistics," the report says. "
Google earns more than $ 30 billion a year from online advertising, including $ 2 billion in France. However, like other American Internet companies, he pays almost no taxes in France.
“We want to work and be confident that Europe is not a tax haven for certain Internet giants,” French technology minister Fleur Pellerin told reporters.
Making Google and other American companies pay more taxes in France will not be easy and it will take a long time, the report admits, because it will require international cooperation.
The report says that the tax rate will be based on the number of registered accounts that external auditors will check.
Google responded that they are currently considering a nearly 200-page report.
“The Internet offers tremendous opportunities for economic growth and employment in Europe, and we believe that public policy should help ensure that this growth is,” the company said.
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Taxes must be fixed by legislative acts, which, according to the government, will be submitted for consideration by the end of the year. However, another online advertising tax project that Hollander had previously defended faced difficulties. The project for a tax rate of 75% on profits of more than 1 million euros was rejected by the Supreme Court of France, which called it discriminatory.

Any proposal to impose taxes on the collection of personal information may also attract the attention of the French privacy regulator, who have expressed concerns about the amount of data that companies such as Google and Facebook collect.
[ TheNewYorkTimes ]