G20 countries eye tax policy for internet giants

G20 countries are planning a new tax policy for digital giants like Google, based on the business a company does in a country, not where it is headquartered, the Nikkei business daily said Thursday.

The basic policy is likely to be signed by finance ministers from the Group of 20 countries when they meet next month in the Japanese city of Fukuoka ahead of the main G20 meeting in Osaka, the Nikkei said.

The policy, targeting firms like Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, would  “allocate revenue to countries that provide large user bases for the world’s digital corporate giants,” the daily said, citing unnamed sources.

The countries will seek to reach a final agreement in 2020, but how the policy will work remains to be finalised.

One possibility would be to distribute collected tax revenues to countries based on the number of users a given company has in each country.