The European Commission today took the first steps towards an EU-wide tax crackdown on digital companies such as Facebook, Uber and Amazon.

It called for co-ordinated binding rules to be proposed as early as Spring next year and suggested faster stop-gap measures such as a levy on digital streaming services like Netflix or Spotify.

The OECD, the global standard setter, has set out guidelines for fair taxation of multinational companies but the EU should be prepared to go it alone with tougher rules if it could not secure international agreement, the Commission said today in Brussels.

Other short-term measures advanced by today’s communication, a preliminary step to legislation, are a withholding and an equalisation tax.

The withholding tax would be levied on goods and services bought online. The equalisation tax, which is backed by France, would be imposed on digital companies and bring their payments to the level of, for example, traditional corporate tax.

Many global tech giants pay low levels of tax because they headquarter their companies in countries with low tax rates such as Luxembourg. Because the intellectual property on their products is registered in low-tax jurisdictions, they can claim the profits are generated there even if the service is used in a different country.