Tech Brief: Britain to Target Online Platforms Like Amazon, Facebook & Google With New "Digital Services Tax"

First came GDPR, then the Link Tax (that calls for news aggregators like Google News to pay publishers for using snippets of their articles on their platforms), and now comes the Digital Services Tax. If one thing is clear, it's that the U.K./ European Union is certainly not making it easy for U.S. tech monopolies to do business in the region. And for the right reasons, if I may add. More than six months after the European Commission proposed a three percent levy on digital companies like Facebook and Google, Britain has said that it would start taxing search engines, social media platforms and online marketplaces that generate at least 500 million pounds a year in global revenue effective April 2020. "It's clearly not sustainable, or fair, that digital platform businesses can generate substantial value in the U.K. without paying tax here in respect of that business," finance minister Philip Hammond was quoted as saying in his annual budget speech on Monday. The companies would be taxed at two percent on the money they make from U.K. users, the treasury said, adding the move was expected to raise US$ 512 million a year.