The new Telecommunications Law, which begins its public hearing process prior to its parliamentary processing, goes on to classify as operators the instant messaging platforms, such as WhatsApp or Telegram, and extends them a rate of one euro for every thousand billed, provided that the income in Spain exceeds one million per year.
The theory is clear, but the practice is not so clear.
WhatsApp, a service fully established in Spain, is free in its standardized version, and in addition its parent company, Facebook, tends to channel its numbers through Europe to the tax headquarters that the US company maintains in Ireland, a country with lax taxation.
The new norm contemplates a new type of operators that provide services without using numbering, unlike Telefónica, Orange or Vodafone, a new category in which instant messaging services fit.
Thus, WhatsApp or Telegram will have to detail the society to which they belong and what telecommunications service they provide, part of the business on which it is raised.
From there, an annual income statement for the service would have to be made, as explained by the Secretary of State for Telecommunications in a briefing in which EL MUNDO has participated.
This WhatsApp rate The Secretary of State said that the Government is "aware" that the rate will not affect the giants that, even though operating in Spain, have their tax headquarters outside of Spain.
The figure adds to the tax that the Executive of Pedro Sánchez has activated for internet giants such as Apple, Facebok or Amazon, a rate colloquially known as the Google rate.
The
WhatsApp rate
will therefore be difficult to assign to this type of platform, a circumstance of which the Secretary of State, Roberto Sánchez, is "aware", who recalls that these do not always have to be free and that he considers relevant " incorporate new operators "into the regulations as soon as possible.
However, the new Telecommunications Law, which renews that of 2014, should complete the transposition of the European guideline this year, before December 31, 2020, and it will not achieve it.
"We did not arrive on time", recognized Sánchez, for whom, in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, he trusts that "this delay will be the least possible", a shift in deadlines that will also affect the new Audiovisual Law.
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