French Constitutional Court to Rule on Legality of Digital Services Tax

• The French Supreme Administrative Court referred a question to the Constitutional Court regarding the 3 percent digital services tax
• Digital Classifieds France requested a refund for the digital services tax paid in 2019
• The company raised a constitutional question about the tax’s compliance with rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution
• The company argues the tax creates an irrational inequality between taxpayers based on corporate tax status in France
• The exclusions in the tax are claimed to violate the principle of equality before tax law
• The tax allegedly introduces irrational differences in treatment between companies offering the same service on different platforms
• The tax’s group-level threshold assessment is said to create unfair treatment and an irrebuttable presumption of fraud
• The territoriality rules based on a national presence coefficient are claimed to be neither objective nor rational
• The tax is argued to create unequal treatment by having different calculation methods for the national presence coefficient depending on whether services are provided by one or two companies within a group

Source: conseil-etat.fr

Note that this post was (partially) written with the help of AI. It is always useful to review the original source material, and where needed to obtain (local) advice from a specialist.

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