A levy that could raise billions was approved by a room so empty that the vending machine voted twice, according to a janitor.
PARIS, France (The Paris Fool) – A tax on every gigabyte of internet traffic delivered to French households has cleared the Assemblee nationale by 11 votes to 10, with 14 abstentions, meaning the fate of a levy projected to raise billions was decided by fewer people than it takes to staff a mid-sized bakery, as reported by The Next Web.
The amendment, pushed through by Socialist deputies by a single vote, sets a rate of 0.055 euros per gigabyte, which its authors say would be paid by streaming giants and which a government minister warned would land half on smaller providers, many of them French. The government and the finance committee both opposed it, which in the current Assemblee is a reliable predictor of victory.
How Do You Count a Gigabyte of Parliament?
The first practical problem, according to officials at the Direction Generale des Octets Imposables, is measurement. Nobody can say exactly how many gigabytes a single plenary session generates, although a draft internal note estimates that one afternoon of amendment debate on cognac VAT produces “roughly 40 gigabytes of video, 38 of which are people looking at their phones.”
By that logic, the Assemblee would become France’s biggest taxpayer in the very week it voted the tax, a fact the tax authority described as “a potentially useful feedback loop” and the Assemblee’s own accounts office described as “a leak.”
The Evidence So Far
A working paper circulating at the finance ministry sets out the known facts about the measure:
- Authors’ estimated annual take: 10 billion euros, or about one and a half Assemblee budgets’ worth of tea.
- Providers who would pay: Google, Meta, Amazon, Netflix and Akamai, plus the makers of a well-known free video player that says its bill would top one million euros a year.
- Providers who could pass the cost on to users of free services: nobody has yet explained how, including the author, who raised the question himself.
- Chance the Senate, where the conservative Republicans hold a majority, will wave it through: described by one staffer as “about the same as the Senate buying a round.”
Comedians Weigh In on the Bill
Stand-up Theophile Ravenelle-Brun, who tests material every Thursday at a basement club in the 11th arrondissement, said the tax finally gives the French a reason to watch less content. “For years my mother has watched six hours of television a night and said she has nothing to do. Now she will watch four, save thirty centimes, and call it a fiscal sacrifice for the nation.”
His colleague Odile Marchetti-Rousseau was less impressed. “Eleven votes. Eleven! I have had more people agree on the pizza topping at my cousin’s wedding. And we ended up with anchovies, which is also a tax on the innocent.”
Hunting for the Tax’s Real Purpose
Analysts note that the measure still has to survive the rest of the budget process, and that the government could in any case drop it by forcing the text through without a final vote, which is the legislative equivalent of quietly deleting a draft from your phone. Even so, the bill has already achieved something rare, which is that every platform, every provider and every minister has now been forced to say the word “gigabyte” aloud, in public, without checking.
The team at Bohiney asked a Socialist aide whether the tax might also apply to articles about the tax. After a long pause he said it depended on how many words were in them, and then asked, quietly, whether we had a spare router.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
