GERMANY is weighing plans for a 10 per cent digital tax for internet giants such as Alphabet and Meta, a senior official said Friday, despite the risk of stoking further trade tensions with the United States.
“This is a question of tax justice,” parliamentary state secretary in the digital ministry Philip Amthor told Die Welt newspaper.
“Large digital corporations in particular are cleverly engaging in tax avoidance” while German businesses are “treated with no mercy, everything is taxed”.
“A fairer system must be created here so that this tax avoidance is addressed,” he said about the plan to tax advertising revenue from platforms such as Meta’s Instagram and Facebook.
Germany’s media and culture commissioner Wolfram Weimer said earlier the government was drafting a proposal for such a digital tax but would first invite Google and other big tech companies for talks.
Weimer — the former editor of Die Welt and other media — on Thursday told Stern magazine that “the large American digital platforms like Alphabet/ Google, Meta and others are on my agenda”.
He said he had “invited Google management and key industry representatives to meetings at the chancellery to examine alternatives, including possible voluntary commitments”.
“At the same time, we are preparing a concrete legislative proposal,” Weimer added.
This could be based on the model in Austria, which has a five per cent tax, he said, adding that in Germany “we consider a 10 per cent tax rate to be moderate and legitimate”.
AFP
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