Not just EUR 5.5 cents per GB! The tax is limited to 15% of revenue from data sales in France, or *2% of total global revenues.*
So a Netflix might pay 15% of total streams.
You and I make a France-only service and we are capped at 2%!
A tariff / protectionism / import substitution kind of flavor. Pretty clearly their move is to tax larger multinationals and spare small local French firms? French firms will also face an odd incentive to weigh global market expansion with the increase in their local digital transmission tax?
Note also, you could make a France-only business from SF or Bangladesh or Ireland.
> « La taxe sur les producteurs de données numériques fait l’objet d’un plafonnement correspondant au maximum à 15 % du chiffre d’affaires réalisé en France par l’émetteur ou à 2 % de son chiffre d’affaires total. [1]
"The tax on digital service producers has a ceiling that corresponds to a maximum of 15% of France-based revenue by the transmitter or 2% of its total revenue (my translation)."
I wonder if this got solved anywhere yet: how do you get politicians that actually want to save money instead of raising taxes or creating new types of taxes?
I understand that it’s way easier and quicker to do the latter instead of saving.
That’s the reason they do it in the first place.
I just wonder if there is a way to incentivize them to save instead. Maybe some country was successful at one point in time.
Warren Buffett, I believe, suggested passing a law making every sitting member of Congress ineligible for reelection whenever the federal deficit exceeds 3%
I suspect he suggested 3% because of the yearly GDP growth at the time, but I say make it 0%. Politicians shouldn't have the authority of indebting future generations.
>I wonder if this got solved anywhere yet: how do you get politicians that actually want to save money instead of raising taxes or creating new types of taxes?
???
"I'll lower/won't raise your taxes" is politics 101. The bigger issue is how you prevent politicians from promising goodies and/or lower taxes, funding them both by borrowing.
I think it will just cause France to be siloed. Imagine what a child downloads in 5-6 hours a day of mindless garbage, now that is a €20/month habit why would YouTube or TikTok want them anymore. Bingers on streaming services are also putting the providers in an awkward position. In the linked article VLC estimates this will cost them €1m/year. Steam is on the hook for €3.25m/week that is the equivalent of them losing €11m/week in sales so even they will be lucky to still be profitable in France.
Came here to say this. The forum post is factually incorrect, it would be good to add a note.
With the state of French politics lately, it's very unlikely any budget will be passed any time soon. My take is the proposal is a stunt aimed at generating some attention.
This is what all the recent articles are about. It passed 11 against 10 out of 577 potential votes. The chances this makes it into the actual budget are quite slim and it would be insane if it happened.
The fact that this was proposed and voted on is ridiculous enough. In this day and age we need _some_ politicians with basic technical knowledge to help guide society in the right direction.
This just points out how incredibly incompetent everyone involved is about technical matters (I will refrain from making comments about their competency in other fields but I'm afraid that this is not a great sign).
The stated reason is that physical business, when they use the country's infrastructure pay tax to contribute to the upkeep. But presumably, internet businesses, especially those based outside the country use the infrastructure but do not pay for the upkeep. This tax is supposed to address this issue.
While the solution might not be optimal, how valid is the underlying problem? Can someone make genuine steelman arguments?
I actually like the idea of this, but with some restrictions (and wouldn't mind seeing it in the US). Yes, I know the costs are passed thru to consumers.
Here's my thinking:
1. Limit who is charged based on how much bandwidth they consume / month. If it's over 1TB, the tax goes into affect. This helps small businesses.
2. If (1) can't work, we can do it based on income from French users above X / month.
3. Tax income must go towards infrastructure projects: Parks & Recs, Fiber buildouts, etc.
If the US were to follow this excellent idea to raise revenue, it could completely solve the federal budget deficit.
A modest download tax of USD $2.07 per GB suffices.
Estimate:
- 134 million households
- approx 80% of households subscribe to home broadband
- approx 750 GB download per month per household
- $2 trillion annual deficit
- assumes no change in household behaviour in response to the new tax
Not if you are using enterprise ssds... but this is some insane profit seeking. I think they should just ask for service providers to pay a share of the local revenues that would be easier to digest than this insanity.
I feel like torrenting is tax evasion now as well in France.
I tried playing the monster mash on YouTube tonight. It played two ads then started the song but the video had a weird ai avatar performing. It played for five seconds then started playing another ad.
That's not it, it's tax optimization, it's sibling with friends in a political parties. Easy to confuse them, looking almost the same, but it's in fact two separate concepts!
Haha, making better compression algorithms is a detriment to society, I love it. Finally. Getting those bastard HEVC devs behind bars is a lifelong dream of mine.
So a Netflix might pay 15% of total streams. You and I make a France-only service and we are capped at 2%!
A tariff / protectionism / import substitution kind of flavor. Pretty clearly their move is to tax larger multinationals and spare small local French firms? French firms will also face an odd incentive to weigh global market expansion with the increase in their local digital transmission tax?
Note also, you could make a France-only business from SF or Bangladesh or Ireland.
> « La taxe sur les producteurs de données numériques fait l’objet d’un plafonnement correspondant au maximum à 15 % du chiffre d’affaires réalisé en France par l’émetteur ou à 2 % de son chiffre d’affaires total. [1]
"The tax on digital service producers has a ceiling that corresponds to a maximum of 15% of France-based revenue by the transmitter or 2% of its total revenue (my translation)."
[1] https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/17/amendements/3210A/...
I understand that it’s way easier and quicker to do the latter instead of saving.
That’s the reason they do it in the first place.
I just wonder if there is a way to incentivize them to save instead. Maybe some country was successful at one point in time.
I suspect he suggested 3% because of the yearly GDP growth at the time, but I say make it 0%. Politicians shouldn't have the authority of indebting future generations.
???
"I'll lower/won't raise your taxes" is politics 101. The bigger issue is how you prevent politicians from promising goodies and/or lower taxes, funding them both by borrowing.
I am talking about what they actually do after they got elected.
With the state of French politics lately, it's very unlikely any budget will be passed any time soon. My take is the proposal is a stunt aimed at generating some attention.
This is what all the recent articles are about. It passed 11 against 10 out of 577 potential votes. The chances this makes it into the actual budget are quite slim and it would be insane if it happened.
This just points out how incredibly incompetent everyone involved is about technical matters (I will refrain from making comments about their competency in other fields but I'm afraid that this is not a great sign).
While the solution might not be optimal, how valid is the underlying problem? Can someone make genuine steelman arguments?
Here's my thinking:
1. Limit who is charged based on how much bandwidth they consume / month. If it's over 1TB, the tax goes into affect. This helps small businesses.
2. If (1) can't work, we can do it based on income from French users above X / month.
3. Tax income must go towards infrastructure projects: Parks & Recs, Fiber buildouts, etc.
A modest download tax of USD $2.07 per GB suffices.
Estimate:
Lol, my behavior would change a lot if I was paying $2 per gig, my god
Stop wasting your time on that, it’s going to get removed next time.
I feel like torrenting is tax evasion now as well in France.
I'm just bitching....
Just like if you buy something from the store and then return it you get all of your money back even if you actually used the item.
Welcome to EU!