French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire announced that France plans to impose digital tax from this year, emphasising that such a tax had never been more legitimate or more necessary and adding that digital companies were doing better than most during the Coronavirus crisis, according to an AFP report.

It is no secret that big tech companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Google often make very high profits in low-tax countries – a fact that has prompted almost 140 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to negotiate the first major rewriting of tax rules in decades, says a report by Reuters.

Earlier this year, Paris offered to suspend its digital tax on tech companies’ income in France until the end of 2020 in order to accommodate an international deal that was being discussed on this matter. However, the mayhem caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has left finance ministries of several governments around the world grappling to come up with measures to safeguard their economies – relegating the issue of digital tax to the back burner.

Addressing journalists on conference call, Bruno Le Maire declared, “In any case, France will apply – as it has always indicated – a tax on digital giants in 2020 either in an international form if there is a deal or in a national form if there is no deal.”

Facing pressure from the USA, where most tech giants are based, global progress on this issue has been slow and indecisive, provoking certain countries to introduce their own digital tax. Italy, Britain and Spain have also either already introduced their own digital taxes or plan to do so irking Washington which responded with threats of retaliation via trade tariffs.

The need for digital tax on the big tech companies has been further necessitated by the increase in usage of online applications as more and more people work from home under the mandatory confinement rules implemented by several governments around the world which is likely to boost the revenues of internet giants.

Crumbling economies of many EU countries are in dire need of cash to boost their markets from the deepest-ever recession expected this year but previous attempts to create an EU-wide digital tax have failed due to stiff opposition from Ireland, where many big US tech companies are located and book profits, and from certain Nordic countries.