Germany Eyes Digital Tax, But Concerns Linger
Okay, so there's some talk happening in Germany about maybe putting a tax on big online companies like Google and Facebook. The guy in charge of culture, Wolfram Weimer, was like, 'Hey, we're looking at this!' He even threw out the idea of a 10% tax, but didn't say if it was on how much money they make or their profit, you know?
But then the digital ministry folks stepped in and were like, 'Whoa, hold on a sec.' They said if they do this tax thing, it needs to be something a bunch of countries agree on. Also, and this is a big one, they absolutely do not want this tax to make things more expensive for us regular people buying stuff online. That makes sense, right? No one wants to pay more just because of a new tax.
Apparently, the ruling parties in Germany did say they'd think about a digital services tax earlier this year, but it wasn't like, their top priority project. So, it seems like Weimer's idea wasn't fully ironed out with everyone else in the government yet. The digital ministry spokesperson was pretty clear, saying it needs to be targeted, work with other countries, follow EU rules, and ideally help Germany out as an innovation hub. And yeah, NO higher prices for us at the end of the day.
This all comes as the main boss in Germany, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, might be heading to the US soon to chat with President Trump. Trump has said before he doesn't want other countries taking America's tax money, so that could make things interesting, idk.
Plus, the tech industry group, Bitkom, is already warning that this tax could totally make things more expensive for businesses, government stuff, and us consumers. Their president, Ralf Wintergerst, was pretty blunt about it, saying these price hikes would just slow down getting public services online and companies going digital, which we really need to speed up. He basically said we need less financial stuff on digital things, not more. Seems like there's a bit of a debate going on, huh? What do you think about it all?
