Formal opinion · 2013
Fiscalité du numérique
[Taxation of the digital economy — Conseil national du numérique (French national digital council) opinion, 2013]
Opinion on the taxation of digital activities and on the mismatch between territorial tax rules and the business models of large platforms.
A rare case in this library where the recommendation was actually followed, six years later, and by a different route.
The opinion noted in 2013 that tax rules based on physical establishment were unworkable against business models with no necessary location. That diagnosis was correct, and widely shared.
What was actually done belongs to a different register. The French digital services tax adopted in 2019 is a levy on turnover, an expedient openly presented as transitional and meant to create negotiating pressure. The substantive solution came from the multilateral agreement led under the OECD’s aegis, on grounds the opinion had not envisaged.
The lesson concerns latency. Six years separate the diagnosis from the first measure, and taxation is the field where national sovereignty is most jealously asserted and least effective. The argument that finally carried the decision was not technical, it was political: public weariness and states being played openly off against one another. No expert opinion produces that.