The European Union has announced plans to increase the tax burden of online multi-national corporations such as Facebook, Google and Amazon to 3 percent of their corporate profits. Member-states of the EU would also be empowered to tax the profits of these companies on the basis of them having a digital presence in the country, rather than basing their operations and employees there.
Already calls have been made for the United Kingdom to tighten its own corporate tax regime in anticipation of its exit of the European Union set to begin in March 2019, after which it will not be a party to such collective measures.
The measures have been met with generally favourable responses online, with many Twitter observers outraged that such companies have been able to circumvent national tax systems while profiting from the personal information of users, often without their knowledge.
Facebook has come under particular fire for allowing data corporation Cambridge Analytica to gather the private information of at least 50 million of its users in collusion with the election campaign of current US president Donald Trump.