France plans to study different measures to collect more tax from global Internet companies, including a new type of levy on the personal data of web surfers that the likes of Google and Facebook use to make money, reports Reuters.
In a 150-page report commissioned by the government of Socialist President Francois Hollande in July, two experts laid out a series of recommendations for measures at the national and international level to limit technology companies' ability to avoid tax legally.
The government said it would now evaluate the feasibility of the various policies with the aim of proposing a law by year-end to modify how global Internet companies are taxed in France. It added that France would work with countries in the G20, the OECD and the European Union to adapt international tax regimes to the "new reality of the Internet economy".
"This report exposes the off-shoring of profits that is practiced by some companies in the new economy, which will only grow if nothing is done to tax their activities in France," four French ministers said in a joint statement.
Tax experts said France may find - just as it did with its attempt to impose a 75 percent income tax rate on millionaires - that it is difficult to devise a tax that targets only those it wants to but which a court does not find discriminatory.
Corporate tax avoidance has become a hot topic internationally as governments struggle with large deficits in the wake of the banking crisis.
France's planned legislation is in line with a push by Britain and Germany, who want the G20 group of nations to make multinational companies pay their "fair share" of taxes, following reports of large firms exploiting loopholes to shift taxation of their income away from where it is generated.
Read more of this report from Reuters.