Italy and the USA issued a joint assertion towards “discriminatory” taxes on digital companies on Friday, in a doable sign Rome is shifting away from a levy that has irked Washington.
The assertion got here as Meloni held back-to-back transatlantic conferences with Donald Trump and his deputy JD Vance, profitable a heat welcome
from the U.S. president that contrasted along with his frostier remedy of different European leaders.
European levies geared toward hitting dominant U.S. tech giants equivalent to Alphabet’s Google, Meta’s Fb , Apple and Amazon have been a longstanding irritant for U.S. administrations, together with Trump’s.
Italy applies a 3% levy on income from web transactions for digital firms with gross sales of not less than 750 million euros ($853.35 million), which is value lower than 500 million euros in income for the state every year.
“We agreed {that a} non-discriminatory surroundings when it comes to digital companies taxation is critical to allow investments from cutting-edge tech firms,” Rome and Washington mentioned following Meloni’s go to to the White Home on Thursday.
The assertion – which additionally mentioned Trump would pay an official go to to Italy ‘within the close to future – didn’t make clear whether or not Rome had dedicated to scrapping the tax.
Regardless of the comparatively small degree of income the measure generates in a rustic with complete finances spending topping 800 billion euros, the Italian net tax is a thorny challenge for Meloni.
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Whereas she has to take care of the U.S. strain, events in her ruling coalition need her to extend strain on large tech to safe funding wanted to undertake expensive measures with out straining Italy’s fragile public funds, political sources mentioned.
Economic system Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti mentioned on Thursday that negotiations with the U.S. on large tech taxation must be performed bilaterally, not via the EU, including he would meet Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent subsequent week at a G20 gathering.
The joint assertion additionally welcomed American investments in AI computing and cloud companies in Italy to help Italy as the important thing regional knowledge hub for the Mediterranean and North Africa.
Amazon’s computing unit AWS mentioned final 12 months it could make investments 1.2 billion euros in Italy over 5 years in an extra growth of its knowledge centre enterprise within the nation.