A New Internet Tax: Business Change from … FRANCE?
Oh goody. A Whole New Internet Tax.
Our friends in France have come up with a new form of revenue, and while it won’t matter to you if you don’t have a physical presence there, it’s a new idea that I predict will be taking hold. Heads Up.
You may recall that I’ve written about Internet taxation before. Taxes are a funny thing, because you don’t have to pay them if you can figure out a way to show that they don’t apply to you. So when the State of New York decided to pretend that Amazon.com was located there because some of its vendors were, Amazon’s response was simple: they cut off their relationships with those vendors. Slick.
But Google, with both offices and customers in France, will have a hard time fighting this latest move, and because it’s so simple anyone who derives revenue from outside “their” jurisdiction is going to have to watch out for how this business change courtesy of a foreign government effects them.
I can’t wait to see what happens when everyone who runs any advertising through Google starts getting tax bills from places they’ve never been. Thank goodness Google lets you decide where your advertising runs.
By the way: thanks to my old friend and business partner Ken Rutkowski of KenRadio for cluing me in to this one!
