Comment on Poland presses ahead with 3 percent digital tax despite Trump threat
Redex68@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Wait, how does this work? I am for the EU to retaliate with tariffs against the US, but how is Poland able to do it by itself? Isn’t the EU supposed to have a common trade policy?
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Well… Taxes are not unified, trade policy is supposed to be. So this is kinda gray area as it is a tax affecting trade specifically.
Redex68@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Yeah but my understanding was that an important part of the EU is the negotiation of trade deals that regulate tariffs, and that the countries more or less gave their sovereignty in that area to the EU. Maybe I was mistaken?
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Again, what is the difference between a tariff and a tax? Tariffs don’t apply to domestic companies, while taxes do. This tax technically applies to all companies, domestic or foreign, although in reality, there are no domestic companies it would affect.
So it is a tax, not a tariff by a technicality. It may even be the case that a court will strike this law down, saying they can’t pretend it is a tax when it is clearly not meant to tax only foreign tech giants.