Under new Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Germany could impose a new 10 percent tax on major online platforms such as Google and Facebook. Reuters reported that political factions in the country struck a deal earlier this year to pursue these fees for digital service companies.
“These corporations do billions in business in Germany with extremely high profit margins and benefit enormously from the country’s media and cultural output as well as its infrastructure — but they pay hardly any taxes, invest too little, and give far too little back to society,” Germany’s Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer said of the draft rule during an interview with the magazine Stern.
Other nations around the world have also explored and enacted taxes on online revenue generated by the largest internet tech companies. Britain, France, Italy, Spain, Turkey, India, Austria and Canada have similar legislation to the draft rule Germany’s culture minister is proposing, according to Reuters.
If the tax is passed, Germany could see retaliation from President Donald Trump’s administration. Trump had said in February that he would seek tariffs on nations that impose a digital service tax on US tech businesses.