PARIS: The French senate has voted to adopt the so-called ‘YouTube tax’, an amendment to the budget bill which aims to tax the advertising revenues of online video platforms, reports Le Figaro. Approved by the lower house of parliament on 07 December, the new measure applies to all video hosting sites, whether free or paid-for, such as YouTube, Dailymotion and iTunes. The advertising revenues will be taxed at a rate of 2 percent, although exceptions and tax relief measures apply in certain cases. In particular, a higher rate of 10 percent will be levied when the video content is classed as violent or x-rated.
The amendment was supported by France’s national Centre for Cinema and the Moving Image (CNC), which will use the revenue raised by the tax to fund the development of French film making, particularly in the digital animation sector. The government, however, did not back the measure, arguing that the new tax would be difficult to enforce in the case of multinational online platforms that are not based in France.
