French President Emmanuel Marcon wants stricter tax policies for tech firms including Google and Apple that would prevent them from avoiding the majority of the country’s taxes. The move to impose more taxes on companies like Google, Apple, and Amazon would be in France’s best interest, but according to Marcon is also a necessary change to ensure that Europe’s economic interest’s as a whole are protected. Marcon’s plans don’t rely on France alone as he is reportedly working with Germany to reform the tax rules for outside tech companies which again, is said to be about protecting the economic interests of Europe.
In a recent interview with Bloomberg, France’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire spoke on behalf of Marcon and France’s policies about, among other things, lowering corporate tax rates, while also promoting that France is all for free trade and that its plans to close the loopholes that tech firms have been using to avoid more taxes is merely part of the end goal to reach a more harmonized tax plan in Europe. The first step according to Le Maire is the tax harmonization between France and Germany. More to the point Le Maire also believes that a common corporate tax between the two countries would be possible by sometime in 2018, though Le Maire does not make any promises as to how soon next year this would come about.
Though it’s not stated as much, tax harmonization with Germany could have the potential to put France in a tougher spot with other European nations, though Marcon and Le Maire both feel that reaching a common corporate tax with Germany is the right first step to reaching their goals. This step of the plan has been in motion for a little while as France and Germany reportedly began discussions about these corporate tax reforms last month, and are expected to have more discussions about the matter in late September. Back towards the beginning of July 2017 it was reported that French regulatory authorities could have ended up fining Google around $1.3 Billion in back taxes, though it wasn’t more than a day before France came to a decision and ruled in favor of Google, resulting in the search company narrowly avoiding the fine. Though it’s not a direct result of France’s decision, France is likely to be taking that decision into consideration for future discussions about these new policies.