France and the US will seek an agreement on the Google rate

France and the United States will speak again in “15 days” to find a compromise on the taxation of digital giants that will reduce tensions between the two countries, after Washington threatened to impose additional tariffs of 100% on products French, as indicated by the French Minister of Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire.

“We have given ourselves exactly 15 days, until our next interview,” said the French minister, who hopes to meet at the margins of the next World Economic Forum, to be held in the Swiss town of Davos between January 21 and 24, with his American counterpart, the US Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin. He added: “We have agreed to redouble our efforts in the coming days to try to find a commitment on digital taxes in the framework of the OECD,” said the French minister.

In this regard, the French minister has warned that, in the event that the US complied with its threats and imposed such sanctions, France would take the case to the World Trade Organization (WTO) with the support of Brussels. “We would be ready to react with the support of the European Commission,” he said.

At the end of last November, the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) announced the proposal to impose a 100% tariff on the import of 63 French products, whose added value amounts to 2,400 million dollars (2,147 million euros) when considering that the French tax on digital multinationals “discriminates against US companies” and is not consistent with the principles of international taxation and is “monthly onerous” for affected US companies.

Washington responded thus five months later to the promulgation in France of the so-called GAFA rate (by the initials of Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon), its own “Google rate”, which sets a 3% tax on the billing of those digital businesses whose worldwide sales exceed 848 million dollars worldwide and 28 million dollars in France.

Source: dpa