The UK will reconsider its plant to impose a digital tax on major technology companies

The United Kingdom will reconsider its plan to impose a digital tax on major technology companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon as part of its ambition to reach a free trade deal with the United States. A 2% tax is expected to be announced in April on the revenues that big tech companies generate from UK consumers. Washington strongly opposed the plan, saying that any such tax would be discriminatory and inappropriate.

“We are noticing comments on digital taxation and will consider this part of our policy development”, said the British government in documents related to trade talks with the United States.

In January, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the United States would respond to a unilateral tax ruling on the world’s largest technology companies.

“If people want to just levy taxes on our digital companies, we would consider arbitrary car taxes”, said Steven Mnuchin.

At the time, Britain commented that it did not plan to back down.

London has said it wants a global solution to the digital taxation issue and is engaged in international discussions to find one.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is working to develop international regulation to get digital companies to pay where they do business, not where their subsidiaries are registered. The organization wants to agree on the technical details of this tax by July this year.

France is considering a digital tax like but agreed in January to suspend action in that direction after Washington threatened to respond with taxes on French wines.