Under pressure from Washington, Brussels announced, Monday, July 12, the freezing of its digital tax project, during negotiations at the OECD on a reform of the taxation of multinationals, which must be completed in October, after an agreement policy obtained at the G20 on Saturday.
“The success of this process will require a final push from all parties, and the Commission is committed to focusing on this effort. This is why we have decided to put our work on a break on a digital tax proposal ”, said a Commission spokesperson.
The European project has drawn criticism from the United States, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called on the European Union (EU) on Sunday to reconsider it.
“Discriminatory”
The digital tax project was one of the new resources planned by the EU to finance its recovery plan of 750 billion euros. But Washington considers this project discriminatory for the American champions of technologies, like Amazon, Google or Facebook.
The agreement on the taxation of multinationals concluded under the aegis of the OECD and approved on Saturday by the G20 “Calls on countries to agree to dismantle existing digital taxes that the United States considers discriminatory and to refrain from instituting similar measures in the future”, said Mme Yellen Sunday. “It is therefore up to the European Commission and the members of the European Union to decide on the way forward”, she had launched in front of the press on the sidelines of the G20, in Venice.