African countries challenged a French proposal at the United Nations Tuesday that France’s digital service tax be promoted globally as a way to raise tax revenues from the growing amount of economic activity taking place online.
France floated the idea of using its 3% DST on global tech giants as a model for other countries during negotiations over a new UN global tax treaty. A UN committee is in the early stages of drawing up rules to tax “cross-border services in an increasingly digitalized economy”—following a mandate from the General Assembly last December.
“We would be misguided were we to …