French plotting "Google" tax - Accountancy Age.
Plans are in the pipeline for France to hit internet search providers with a tax on advertising revenue.
The sweeping proposal, which would affect internet giants such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! every time a French net surfer clicked on an advertisement or sponsored link, was floated in a government-commissioned survey.
Guillaume Cerutti, one of the authors of the report said the tax would put an end to "enrichment without any limit or compensation", the Daily Telegraph said.
If my work showing Google pays little or no tax outside the USA has given rise to this, that's very good news.
Tax avoidance does not pay is the right message to deliver.
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This may be good news from a tax point of view, however I reckon that Google will simply pass the costs on to webmasters.
I part own a website, which is paid for by Google AdSense, and it is a struggle to break even, never mind make a profit. No doubt, Google keeps the lion’s share of revenue.
The trouble is that there is no way of knowing what their cut of the advertising revenues is – they keep this secret.
If Google is taxed harder, and they pass the cost on to webmasters, the result will be that many websites will vanish from the net, unless they can find other income, which is difficult given how dominant Google is.