The Office of the Commercial Representative of the United States has opened an investigation into the digital taxes provided unilaterally by nine countries, including Spain, and in the entire European Union. The North American Administration will thus review the so-called Google rate that the Pedro Sánchez Government intends to apply to Internet giants, companies such as the North American Facebook, Microsoft or Netflix.

The focus of this research is on Austria, Brazil, the Czech Republic, India, Indonesia, Italy, Turkey, the United Kingdom , the whole of the European Union and Spain, which in one way or another are looking for formulas to tax the commercial activity that these Large online corporations perform in these territories. In the Spanish case, the Tax on Certain Digital Services (IDSD) would establish a tax of 3% of income (not benefits), provided that the affected companies exceed 750 million euros in global turnover and 3 million in this country.

The communication of the beginning of this procedure took place just a few hours before the plenary session of Congress debated the bill for the implementation of this tax. The US advises that, in compliance with section 301 of its regulations, it will examine whether measures of this type are " inadmissible or discriminatory and burden or restrict US trade."

The digital economy is stirring

This initiative by the country chaired by Donald Trump has also coincided with a joint statement from the digital economic environment against the unilateral implementation of a Spanish tax, without waiting for the joint agreement currently being pursued within the framework of the Organization for Cooperation. and Economic Development (OECD).

The organizations and employers of the AMETIC sector, IAB Spain, the Spanish Association of Startups and the Spanish Association of the Digital Economy (Adigital) have expressed their rejection of this project and " request the Government of Spain to reconsider its position until a international agreement ".

These entities maintain that a tax of this kind would end up affecting more modest digital companies but dependent on Big Tech such as Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple, not to mention a foreseeable impact on consumers. Furthermore, in the opinion of these organizations, the Spanish economy would be with this tax " less productive, less innovative , less entrepreneurial and, consequently, less competitive globally".

At the moment, the American investigation is in a first phase, dedicated to obtaining comments and suggestions from the parties involved, but this same procedure is the one that the Trump Administration used to paralyze France's digital rate . The North American Commerce decided to impose 100% tariffs on such iconic French imports as cheese or wine. Negotiations between French President Emmanuel Macron and his counterpart Donald Trump contributed to stopping these tariffs along with the collection of the French Google rate. at least until the end of the year, pending the calculations made by the OECD.

In this regard, the representative of Commerce Robert Lighthizer assured that "the US would take action against those digital tax regimes that discriminate or otherwise impose undue burdens on North American companies."

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