POLITICO: European Commission ready to wait until after 2020 to roll out digital tax

13 July 2020

The European Commission is ready to wait until the OECD agrees on a global digital tax deal before rolling out its own plans, and accepts that a global deal might not happen in 2020, a senior Commission official said today.

The statement goes against the Commission’s previous plans to propose an EU digital tax if the OECD fails to agree on a deal by end-2020.

The Commission has said it will propose an EU-wide levy if the OECD process does not yield results by the end of 2020.

“[T]he EU cannot easily move to a plan B, as long as there is hope to conclude a plan A, which is an international agreement,” said said Benjamin Angel, the director of the Commission’s tax department, in a hearing with the European Parliament’s economic affairs committee.

Angel said that it was unlikely that the OECD will get a deal this year. He said negotiations had been slowed down because of the coronavirus and the U.S. wanting to pause negotiations until after its presidential elections in November.

“Most likely we will have to accept that the OECD process is not moving as quickly as we would hope,” Angel continued.

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