Apple, Google and Amazon raise prices in response to GAFA tax -

Geeko

For several years, Europe has sought to make the American technology giants pay more taxes, which are gracefully lining the pockets of European citizens.

Unfortunately, without an overhaul of the global tax system, there is little chance that this will succeed.

This is why several countries have opted for taxes at the national level intended for GAFA.

Obviously, this solution does not please the main stakeholders who have found the solution.

Apple, Google and Amazon have indeed announced in recent weeks tariff changes for business customers who are in countries where a tax on digital services has been implemented.

This concerns the United Kingdom as well as France, Turkey and Italy, but also non-European countries.

The American giants will get rid of these taxes by passing them on to the prices charged to their customers.

An increase of a few percent

The apple company announced it on its website for developers.

In France, developer customers of the App Store will show an increase of 3%, as in Italy.

In the United Kingdom, it will be 2% and 7.5% in Turkey.

This percentage is to be added to the existing value added tax which varies between 18 and 22% depending on the country.

Google will also increase the fees for all ads purchased from Google Ads and YouTube in countries where digital services tax is applied by a few percent, starting in November.

For Amazon, the price increase for third-party sellers has been applied since September 1 in the UK.

In France, it was already since October 2019.

In fact, GAFA regularly change the prices applied to their customers according to changes in tax regimes and currency valuation - Apple has increased the prices of the App Store by 25% following the fall in the value of the pound after the Brexit vote.

But this time around, it's more like a message to the different countries where the tax is applied.

Google and Amazon had previously shown support for developing international tax reform rather than unilateral taxes.

This would make it possible to have more coherent and valid rules in all countries, but with the position of the United States and the American President on the subject, that is not about to happen.

And for consumers?

Apple has indicated that the prices applied on the App Store will not change.

In other words, the Cupertino company completely clears the tax on GAFA by passing it on to developers and publishers and leaves the choice to the latter to increase their prices in turn to cope with the increase in Apple prices. .

There is therefore a risk that the prices of apps and subscriptions will increase for App Store users in countries affected by the digital services tax.

The risks are the same for those who buy from Amazon.

In the case of Google, this primarily concerns advertisements purchased on its platform.

It's hard to imagine that the consumer could be impacted.

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