Reassured by the Franco-American agreement reached the day before to ease tensions over the French “GAFA tax”, the French Finance Minister, Bruno Le Maire, said on Tuesday 27 August on LCI that the threat of American reprisals had been “dismissed”. On Monday evening, on France 2, French President Emmanuel Macron also assured that the agreement “pacified” relations and removed the threat.
The agreement reached on the margins of the G7 summit in Biarritz (see EUROPE 12313/3) provides for a refund to companies by France of the difference between the French tax and the new international tax system currently being negotiated at the OECD (see EUROPE 12272/3), once it is in place. It also specifies that France will withdraw its tax as soon as an agreement is reached at the OECD.
“Before Biarritz, the threat was real [...] After Biarritz, it is receding. It is not definitely eliminated, but it’s becoming less immediate. And it will obviously depend on the work we will do in the coming days with my American counterpart”, explained Bruno Le Maire.
However, when asked at the end of the G7 about his intention to abandon his threats to impose additional customs duties on French wines, American President Donald Trump did not want to reveal his cards and dodged the question.
“It was important to get the Americans on board”, said Pierre Moscovici, European Commissioner for Taxation, on Europe 1 on Tuesday.
“That said, we must now be clear-headed. We will have to define within the OECD what this international digital tax is; it has not yet been done [...] and we will also have to be careful with our American friends, because they do not necessarily have exactly the same conception of what to tax as we do”, he added.
The Commissioner said he was “confident” that progress will be made by the time of the G20 Finance meeting in Washington in October. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)