Targeted service tax on big American technology companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon is a matter of concern for the US
Italy and the US have issued a joint statement against the taxes imposed by various countries on digital services provided by information technology companies. Not long ago, US President Donald Trump announced that he would take tough measures against the country for imposing Digital Services Tax (DST) on technology companies in his country.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni made a statement after meeting with Trump and US Vice President J.D. Vance, stating that DST is a "biased" provision, according to Reuters. Such a tax, especially aimed at large American technology companies such as Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, has been a concern for the American administration.
Trump ordered his trade representative two months ago to launch an investigation into countries like France, UK, Canada that impose DST and propose retaliatory tariffs. Nepal has also been imposing DST of 2 percent of annual turnover on technology companies. After Trump started talking about it, India canceled the digital advertising tax in the last week of March. Since 2016, India has been levying a 6 percent tax on foreign companies such as Alphabet (Google), Meta and Amazon for providing digital advertising services in India.
In Italy, companies that provide digital services and have an annual turnover of more than 750 million euros are required to pay a 3 percent tax on their income. According to Reuters, Italy will collect an average of 500 million euros in revenue from such a tax. Prime Minister Meloni's statement issued after his visit to Washington said, "We have agreed that the tax imposed on digital services should not be biased so that modern technology companies can invest in Italy." Although the
statement mentioned that Trump will soon make an official visit to Italy, it did not clarify whether DST will be removed/not removed. "Even though the revenue collected from this is very low compared to Italy's total annual budget expenditure of 800 billion euros, this issue is politically sensitive," Reuters said. Instead, he said that there should be direct bilateral talks between the US and Italy. He has also informed that he is preparing to meet with American Finance Minister Scott Besant at the G-20 conference next week. In a
ing statement, Italy welcomed US investment in artificial intelligence, computing and cloud services. Italy hopes that it will help Italy in its efforts to create a regional data center for the Mediterranean and North Africa. Amazon's cloud service unit 'AWS' announced last year that it would invest 1.2 billion euros in Italy over five years. Under that, the goal is to expand the data center in Italy.
