Tech Worries About ‘Accelerating Trend’ in DST Adoption in More Countries, Says ITI

France’s enactment of a digital services tax (see 1912030002) sets a “troubling precedent” because the DST “unnecessarily departs from progress towards stable, long lasting international income tax policies,” and “disproportionately impacts U.S.-headquartered companies.” So testified Sam Rizzo, Information Technology Industry Council director-policy, before a Trade Act Section 301 hearing Tuesday, according to a transcript released Friday at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. The tech industry worries about “an accelerating trend toward the unilateral adoption of DSTs” in other countries, said Rizzo. U.S. “policy responses” need to be “about more” than the French DST, he said. “It is about preventing the wide-scale application of targeted, unilateral taxes which stand to undermine a functioning international tax system and compromise the predictability it has afforded to companies to conduct business globally.” USTR proposed retaliatory tariffs of up to 100 percent on some French non-tech imports. Tariffs on wines "will result in a devastating revenue loss" for members of the National Association of Wine Retailers, testified Director Jeff Zacharia. Many members "anticipate that they'll have to lay off up to 25 percent of their workforce due to declines in sales revenue from tariffs on sparkling wines from France and the other tariffs in place, leading to loss of thousands of jobs," he said.