The US on Tuesday announced its opposition to Canada’s proposed tax on the largest technology firms, warning that it “would examine all options” should Ottawa go ahead with the levy.
The US Trade Representative (USTR) said that Canada should instead work toward implementing a global taxation agreement that Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries announced last year to defuse the global tech tax row.
“As Canada is fully aware, the United States has serious concerns about measures that single out American firms for taxation while effectively excluding national firms engaged in similar lines of business,” the representative said.
Photo: AFP
It called for Ottawa to “focus efforts on engaging constructively” with the OECD negotiations, “instead of pursuing a counterproductive unilateral measure that risks encouraging other countries to follow suit.”
Should Canada go ahead with the tax, the “USTR would examine all options, including under our trade agreements and domestic statutes,” it said.
Washington has hit out at digital services tax proposals globally, which it says impose discriminatory fees on US firms such as Amazon.com Inc, Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google.
The office of Canadian Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland said that Canada’s preference has always been a multilateral pact.
“Canada has a clear national interest in this multilateral agreement, which protects against erosion of the tax base and will generate additional revenue” for the country, her office told Agence France-Presse in an e-mail.
“We sincerely hope that the timely implementation of the new international system” will make Ottawa’s proposed tax “unnecessary” to ensure the protection of Canadian interests, it added.
In October last year, nearly 140 countries reached an agreement on a 15 percent minimum tax under OECD auspices, leading the US to remove punitive tariffs on several countries ahead of the global tax’s imposition, which is expected next year.
Those levies were never imposed, but served as a threat to those countries that go ahead with their digital services tax.
Canada’s proposed 3 percent tax “on revenue from certain digital services” would affect companies with at least US$850 million in gross revenues and apply retroactively to the start of this year, although it would not come into effect until 2024, the USTR said.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
RSS