This is everything except a surprise. On the occasion of the Finance bill 2017, the deputies once again trying to tackle the question of taxation of companies operating on the Internet. Three mps PS (Karine Berger, Bruno Le Roux and Pierre-Alain Muet) have tabled an amendment which must be reviewed on Wednesday. The goal is clear : to force the actors of the Web to pay the same level of tax as the companies. The sites hosting the videos are the first affected, so that the text was not long in coming to be baptized “Tax Youtube”. But as often, it is very difficult to reconcile tax and digital.
what is this tax ? The amendment proposed to create a tax on the money generated by the audiovisual content available online in France. In case of paid service, with video on demand (Vod) for example, the tax is based on the price paid by the user. If the video is free – as is the case on Youtube or Dailymotion – the tax concerns the money that can earn its author via the advertising or the sponsorship of a brand. In all cases, the tax would amount to 2% of revenue, with one exception : it would increase to 10% for the video to “pornographic or inciting to violence”. Regardless of whether the site is located in France or abroad : the tax would affect any content broadcasted in France.
The text provides, however, several exceptions. The band-ads and the sites that the video is not the main specialty would be exempt. In order not to penalize the small structures, the 100,000 first euro earned would not be taxed. Similarly, the fans would benefit from a tax reduction of 66% in order not to penalize each other tomorrow.
Why do you want to introduce a new tax ? The first reason invoked is that of equal treatment. Services, video rentals, old-fashioned – video-clubs – are already subject to a 2% tax. The tv channels pay also more taxes. To avoid a difference in treatment, it is therefore logical to introduce a similar charge on operators offering online video. But behind this desire for equality tax, this tax plan is also and above all a new attempt to charge for digital businesses their fair share of tax.
The giants of the web such as Google, Apple, Facebook or Amazon take advantage of their ability to operate from several States to practice tax optimization : the art of paying less income tax while remaining in the bounds of legality. The French legislator, like its european counterparts, attempted to find a way to make them pay the same level of taxation as traditional businesses.
A tax to the many areas of shadow. If one can understand that the legislature wishes to restore a minimum of fairness between the physical economy and commerce, and between the French players and the foreigners, the text raises many questions. By targeting the companies specialising in the provision of free videos, fee target clearly companies such as Youtube, Dailymotion or Vimeo. How then consider Facebook, whose core business is not video, but which accommodates more ?
similarly, the fact that the sites information occur before any of the articles should allow them to escape. The catch-up services offered by the television channels would also be spared, but what of their content made specifically for the Internet ? How will be treated to the sites of radio, which broadcast more live programs and catch-up, the image of Europe 1 and 17 hours of video daily ?
Another question : the amendment proposes a 66% abatement for the videos made by the “private users for the purposes of sharing and exchange within communities of interest”. In other words, it is amateur. But when a Youtubeur ceases to be regarded as an amateur and becomes a professional ? The most well-known in France, such as Norman or Cyprian, have nothing more to do with the high school student who has fun in her room the traditional way. By offering a deductible of € 100,000, the amendment seems to want to avoid touching to the almost all of each other.
actors on The Web do not want. Without surprise, the main concerned were not slow to react to say all the evil they think. Thus, the Association des services internet communautaires (Asic) “application to the parliamentarians who have just begun review of the draft finance law to the national Assembly, not to adopt such a provision that impacterait seriously the creation on the Internet”.
And this organization – which includes, for example, Dailymotion, Deezer, Google or even Facebook – to argue that it is questionable to want to tax the young content creators to finance the film sector of which they are not part of and do not enjoy. All the more that the films funded are not to be found almost never on Youtube, Dailymotion or Facebook. In addition, this tax is a risk of weakening the accounts of the sites of the chains of classic television when they are already facing financial difficulties and are struggling to attract more young people to their sites.
struggling to make pay the web companies. If this amendment is a new signal sent to the professionals of the Internet, there is still far from the warning shot. In fact, this is not the first time that mps and senators are trying to find a good tax revenue for the digital tests that have never been implemented. It is thus that, following the report Zelnik, senator Marini has filed in late 2010 a proposal for amendment providing for already to institute a tax on income from online advertising, to the tune of 1%. This proposal, then called “Google tax”, has finally been abandoned under the pressure of Bercy after having been strongly criticised by the national digital Council (CNN) or even by Asic. Another amendment going in the same direction was introduced by senators communists in September of 2013 before being dismissed.
many of These failures demonstrate the difficulty of finding the right tax solution to impose on the actors of the web. A report published in January 2013 by the ministry of economy and finance summarizes the situation : not being permanently linked to a territory, the companies in the digital sector can more easily adapt to work around a tax measure. Ideally, it would therefore be necessary that the european States agree on a common rule to prevent companies from escaping it in Europe. In the meantime, any new tax passed in France would be mainly paid for by the French actors, and not by the heavy weight that it is supposed to target, and who are mainly americans. Instead of submitting the French actors and their foreign competitors on an equal footing, such a tax might on the contrary reinforce this unequal treatment. The puzzle of the taxation of the digital still has beautiful days in front of him.
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