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France is targeting large technology firms such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and others in a move that could fetch the French nation about $500 million.

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Sunday in an interview with Le Parisien newspaper. Le Maire said the tax targets companies with a worldwide digital turnover of at least 750 million euros and French revenue of more than 25 million euros.

The target will see over 30 companies paying the taxes, mostly American, Chinese, and British, as well as several firms with French origins that have been bought by foreign companies. The French nation’s minister will present the bill before the parliament on Wednesday to charge Facebook, Apple and other digital giants, champions of tax optimization, according to the newspaper.

CCN | https://www.ccn.com/france-slams-google-facebook-amazon-taxes

It is as clever as it gets considering these countries make more money than many countries combined, California is basically worlds 5th biggest economy ahead of many many countries just thanks to these tech companies and if France manages to get them to their country somehow (doubtful) they would be getting insane amount of taxes from these companies.

Obviously these companies became this big by not paying too much taxes so assuming they would pay all their taxes to France while they are not even paying in USA would be a dream for France. Its not going to happen, amazon had like 24+ billion dollars in profit alone and instead of paying taxes like a proper business they just found loopholes to not pay for it and gave like 20 million dollars to charity to look good. So to France ; don't hold your breath.

Why are they targeting just technology companies when there are many billion dollar companies around. They should go after starbucks and all other tax avoiding companies

Hope they'll do that too, not only France but other countries. They have huge profit, as time goes, their budget rises and rises and their profit increases too. Finally we receive the fact that huge amount of money goes into some people's pocket while others are staying without it. Imagine, 2-3 has as much profit as 100K normal citizen have. So yeah, increase tax, they don't need to get so much rich.

Lol! Has the economy of France weakened to a drastic level since few years so that they have look for cash cows? They are literally mal-targetting cash rich companies to fill in their own treasury for their own benefit! How silly is that!! It's not a good mentality or environment for conducting busines in France and may damage the industry friendly face of it the way it damaged for India over a tax battle with Vodafone!

Amazon has gone years without paying taxes.  They just keep re-investing any profits that they have into expanding their business so at the end of the year their profit is zero.  They are playing the capitalistic game while serious needs go unfunded with homeless people starving on the streets.

It's the GAFA tax (google it) that Europe is currently working on since some time and since it wasn't able to reach a consensus France decided to start without EU. It's not the first country to do it. Spain, Italy, and a few others do it as well. If Google, Facebook or xyz is making a profit in your country, why shouldn't they pay their taxes? Are they too big to be taxed?

Such a wrong attitude. Who are you to decide who can and who can't get wealthy? It's not the government's money to begin with, and the money the France government ends up collecting won't be spent in any form that would better the lives of everyone living in that country. It's a disgusting form of extortion.

I can perfectly understand that the top companies will do everything they can to reduce their tax bills. It's legal too, so what's the issue here? No laws are broken here.

They are trying to get more funds and those big companies can fulfill it. Anyway, for sure they are also running with the small companies who are avoiding taxes, and also on individuals. Cryptocurrency might help the individuals to lessen their taxes I guess, better to invest it now.

i think the most winning companies should pay the most tax. but the world's largest companies do not pay enough taxes States should get too much tax from large companies. because they are the ones that exploit the whole world.

Honestly, $500 million sounds like a small amount when we talk about companies like Amazon, Google or Facebook wich together have a revenue of over $100 billion together annually. And we are talking about 27 other companies, meaning there will be another few billions added to that huge revenue. Anyway its good to see that they actually take action against this big companies since many little businesses are ripped of by taxes