A tax proposal by the French government is targeting web giants such as Google and Facebook by charging them for the personal data they collect on the Internet.
European governments are becoming increasingly frustrated at their inability to collect tax revenue from the primarily American online companies that make billions of dollars.
Nicolas Colin, a government auditor and technology entrepreneur, is one of the men behind the tax plans, reported the New York Times.
He said: “It’s meant to incentivise everyone to operate at a higher level, not to raise a lot of money. You can’t go from zero to collecting hundreds of millions overnight.”
The report does not specify how much revenue the tax would make, but it is not expected to be high.
Web-based companies such as Amazon, Facebook and Google are able to avoid Europeans taxes in the bigger nations such as Britain, Germany and France because they can take advantage of bases in smaller countries such as Luxembourg and Ireland where tax is lower.
“Personal data are the fuel of the digital economy,” Edouard Geffray, the French data protection agency CNII’s Secretary General, told the online magazine Slate. “Given that, it would seem like a natural idea to envision taxing the use of them.”
