France: The Country Adam Smith Forgot!

France, a country still recovering from the massive “egg on face” tax policy debacle of creating a “carbon tax” that exempted 93% of the population, only to be struck down by the constitutional court, on the grounds that the tax “violates the equality enjoyed by all in terms of public charges”, has now gone one step further.  Sarkozy et. al.,  are at it again.  They now suggest that the government should focus on raising still more tax off that existing but ever reducing segment of the French population: those actually engaged in commerce!  They suggest that, firms such as Google, Yahoo and Facebook should pay a new tax on their online ad revenues.  Is this going to augment France’s intention to go head-to-head with Google over its plans to digitise the world’s books, with a project to set up its own digital library financed by the government to the tune of £700m.

BBC – France considers tax for Google, Yahoo and Facebook