Clete Willems quoted by Financial Times on Digital Tax Probe
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Clete Willems, public law and policy partner at Akin Gump, has been quoted in the Financial Times article “US digital tax probe raises threat of yet more tariffs.”
The article reports that the U.S. Trade Representative’s office has announced a Section 301 investigation into several countries that had either implemented, or outlined plans to implement, a digital services tax. Many of those taxes, the FT says, impose the levy on a company’s revenues where they are generated, even if the company does not have a physical presence there.
According to the article, an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) meeting to discuss corporate tax reform scheduled for next month was postponed until October because of the coronavirus pandemic. In his view, Willems said, there was a sense that digital taxes had proliferated even as OECD talks appeared stalled.
“This makes it critical that the administration push back on this somehow and let countries know they can’t get away with these types of protectionist policies,” Willems said. He added that the issue should be raised in bilateral trade talks with the listed countries.
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