Reportedly, Germany Considering Special Levy On Foreign Internet Companies
The finance ministry of Germany is looking into the likelihood of a 15% special levy on the online advertising income gathered by foreign Internet firms such as Facebook or Google from German operators, as reported by a magazine Wirtschaftswoche.
This step could comprise treating disbursements for online ads in a similar manner as license fee costs, which would cause the German firms to undergo withholding tax being subtracted. The German firms, which select to position online ads, will have to recuperate this withholding duty from the Internet companies as the income would be their original tax liability, ass aid by the report.
The detour through German consumers would be essential as the tax system has no admission to platform operators located overseas. The finance ministry had substantiated the plans, but strained there was no deal on how to continue between individual states and federal finance authorities, the magazine reported.
In the meantime, the European Union is getting ready to revise its 2-decades-old copyright guidelines that will impel Facebook and Alphabet’s Google to share profits with the creative industries and eliminate copyright-protected material on Instagram and YouTube.Representatives from the EU nations, the European Commission, and the European Parliament settled an agreement after day-long discussions.
Likewise, the social media tax of Uganda has ascertained to be unfavorable to both its mobile money and internet sectors. Following 3 months after its levy implementation in July 2018, a drop in the digit of internet users, overall revenues gathered, as well as mobile money transactions was noted. The Uganda Communications Commission, in a string of tweets, mentioned internet subscription dropped by over 2.5 million users, whereas the number of taxpayers from OTT (over-the-top) media services declined by over 1.2 million users. The worth of mobile money transactions also dropped by around 4.5 trillion Ugandan shillings (that is, $1.2 Million).
