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  • Hacker News
  • France is in pretty bad financial shape, so they are going to be looking at getting money wherever they can.
    by vondur
  • This is not a definitive vote, there is few reason to think it will be adopted in the final budget law as the government and Senate will be probably against this amendment. Additionally it's expected the budget law will be globally rejected by assembly itself as there is no clear majority at the moment.
    by Rexxar
  • If the US were to follow this excellent idea to raise revenue, it could completely solve the federal budget deficit.

    A modest download tax of USD $2.07 per GB suffices.

    Estimate:

      - 134 million households
  - approx 80% of households subscribe to home broadband
  - approx 750 GB download per month per household
  - $2 trillion annual deficit
  - assumes no change in household behaviour in response to the new tax
    by shoo
  • This was a proposal, and it was rejected. Not an actual tax or law.
    by stephc_int13
  • Maybe this would at least have the silver lining of forcing website operators to not ship 100MB of bloated javascript mess and auto playing video
    by jedbrooke
  • I wonder if this got solved anywhere yet: how do you get politicians that actually want to save money instead of raising taxes or creating new types of taxes?

    I understand that it’s way easier and quicker to do the latter instead of saving.

    That’s the reason they do it in the first place.

    I just wonder if there is a way to incentivize them to save instead. Maybe some country was successful at one point in time.

    by baxtr
  • Not simply EUR 5.5 cents per GB! The tax is limited to 15% of revenue from data transmission in France, or 2% of total global revenues.

    So Netflix pays max 15% of streaming revenue in France. If you and I start a streaming service only in France, we pay a max 2% of streaming revenue in France (because that's the only place where we stream). So there's potentially a protectionist element. But note that you and I could do our France-only service from anywhere and still be capped at 2%, according to the law as I understand it (not a lawyer).

    > « La taxe sur les producteurs de données numériques fait l’objet d’un plafonnement correspondant au maximum à 15 % du chiffre d’affaires réalisé en France par l’émetteur ou à 2 % de son chiffre d’affaires total. [1]

    "The tax on digital service producers has a ceiling that corresponds to a maximum of 15% of France-based revenue by the transmitter or 2% of its total revenue (my translation)."

    [1] https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/17/amendements/3210A/...

    by malloryerik
  • It's in incredible how hostile this tax is but I have to give them credit. They just see something that's productive and valuable and they just see money they can extort from people.

    No justification, like gasoline tax, which is used to fix the roads and fund green technology. Or tax on stock buybacks which have questionable value in society. Or carbon tax.

    Just see something people do and tax it.

    by bko

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