Although the EU-wide first attempt at taxing big digital companies for helping people buy and sell things and share pictures of cats online has failed, statists everywhere don’t despair: national governments can still punish them and stifle innovation all on their own.
- European competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager is urging members states like France and the UK to proceed with their own proposals to tax Facebook, Google, and other American digital titans. This naturally arouses fear of U.S. retaliation, but perhaps the threat isn’t as meaningful when multiple trade wars – often launched by the U.S. with a “shoot first, make reasonable demands later, or maybe never, who knows” approach – are already in the offing.
- As reported previously in the TES, digital trendsetter Spain is furthest along with its proposal for punitive taxes on the digital big baddies. Read here why it is such an extravagantly bad idea.
- Also don’t forget, there is a push afoot to change the voting rules of the European Commission to allow decisions by qualified majorities, rather than consensus, so that pesky spoilers like Sweden and Ireland, which vetoed the last EU-wide digital tax proposal, can’t get in the way of everyone else’s fun new taxes. As always with democratic voting procedures, if you don’t like the result, just change the rules!
