A European Union plan to raise more tax from digital multinationals faced the first signs of scepticism on Saturday, as smaller members of the bloc warned about the economic impact from such a move.
TALLINN (Reuters) – A European Union plan to raise more tax from digital multinationals faced the first signs of scepticism on Saturday, as smaller members of the bloc warned about the economic impact from such a move.
France wants to tax companies like Google and Facebook on their turnover, rather than profits, to increase revenue from global online groups, accused of paying too little in Europe.
More than a third of the EU’s 28 members backed Paris on Saturday at a meeting of EU finance ministers in Tallinn, the Estonian capital, but the move needs the agreement of all member states to reduce the risk of legal challenges.
“We should be very careful,” Denmark’s finance minister Kristian Jensen said, warning of the risks of pushing innovative companies away from Europe.
His remarks were echoed by Luxembourg’s finance minister Pierre Gramegna, who said any EU solution would need global backing to avoid damaging Europe’s competitiveness. “It does not make any sense” for Europe to move without a global agreement, he said.
The Czech Republic and Malta said a turnover tax would be technically difficult to implement.
If the divisions persist, a minimum number of ten EU states may apply the tax on their own under a procedure known as enhanced cooperation. Countries can also charge the tax unilaterally.
“Enhanced cooperation is certainly a legally possible option,” Valdis Dombrovskis, vice president of the European Commission, told a news conference at the end of the ministerial meeting.
But the objective at this stage is to reach an agreement among all members by the end of the year, followed by legislative proposals next spring, he added. The commission will outline other legal options to tax the digital economy in a paper in the coming days. QUICK FIX
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said the turnover tax was necessary to allow EU countries to move quickly. “Otherwise we risk a breakdown with citizens across Europe,” he added.
Ten states signed a statement in support of this approach on Saturday. In addition to France, they are Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Slovenia and Portugal. Belgium and the Netherlands publicly backed the initiative. Others did so in private meetings.
The French plan was seen as a “quick fix” to address the issue, but European officials acknowledged it may have some drawbacks. It could be easily exposed to legal challenges, divide the EU and cause trouble with the United States, home to most major online companies, they said.
Estonia, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, proposed a more structural solution that would permit states to tax companies where they have a digital, not just physical, presence.
The two plans could be complementary and be part of a two-step approach, the Estonian undersecretary for tax, Dmitri Jegorov, said.

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Equifax said on Friday that it made changes in its top management as part of its review of a massive data breach, with two technology and security executives leaving the company « effective immediately. »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Equifax said on Friday that it made changes in its top management as part of its review of a massive data breach, with two technology and security executives leaving the company “effective immediately.”
The credit-monitoring company announced the changes in a press release that gave its most detailed public response to date of the discovery of the data breach on July 29 and the actions it has since taken.
The statement came on a day when Equifax’s share price continued to slide following a week of relentless criticism over its response to the data breach,
Lawmakers, regulators and consumers have complained that Equifax’s response to the breach, which exposed sensitive data like Social Security numbers of up to 143 million people, had been slow, inadequate and confusing.
Equifax on Friday said that Susan Mauldin, chief security officer, and David Webb, chief information officer, were retiring.
The company named Mark Rohrwasser as interim chief information office and Russ Ayres as interim chief security officer, saying in its statement, “The personnel changes are effective immediately.”
Rohrwasser has led the company’s international IT operations, and Ayres was a vice president in the IT organization.
The company also confirmed that Mandiant, the threat intelligence arm of the cyber firm FireEye, has been brought on to help investigate the breach. It said Mandiant was brought in on Aug. 2 after Equifax’s security team initially observed “suspicious network traffic” on July 29.
The company has hired public relations companies DJE Holdings and McGinn and Company to manage its response to the hack, PR Week reported. Equifax and the two PR firms declined to comment on the report.
Equifax’s share prices has fallen by more than a third since the company disclosed the hack on Sept. 7. Shares shed 3.8 percent on Friday to close at $92.98.
U. S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has built a reputation as a fierce consumer champion, kicked off a new round of attacks on Equifax on Friday by introducing a bill along with 11 other senators to allow consumers to freeze their credit for free. A credit freeze prevents thieves from applying for a loan using another person’s information.
Warren also signaled in a letter to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency she helped create in the wake of the 2007-2009 financial crisis, that it may require extra powers to ensure closer federal oversight of credit reporting agencies.
Warren also wrote letters to Equifax and rival credit monitoring agencies TransUnion and Experian, federal regulators and the Government Accountability Office to see if new federal legislation was needed to protect consumers.
Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen and more than 30 others in a state group investigating the breach acknowledged that Equifax has agreed to give free credit monitoring to hack victims but pressed the company to stop collecting any money to monitor or freeze credit.
“Selling a fee-based product that competes with Equifax’s own free offer of credit monitoring services to victims of Equifax’s own data breach is unfair,” Jepsen said.
Also on Friday, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate subcommittee on Social Security urged Social Security Administration to consider nullifying its contract with Equifax and consider making the company ineligible for future government contracts.
The two senators, Republican Bill Cassidy and Democrat Sherrod Brown, said they were concerned that personal information maintained by the Social Security Administration may also be at risk because the agency worked with Equifax to build its E-Authentication security platform.
Equifax has reported that for 2016, state and federal governments accounted for 5 percent of its total revenue of $3.1 billion. 400,000 BRITONS AFFECTED
Equifax, which disclosed the breach more than a month after it learned of it on July 29, said at the time that thieves may have stolen the personal information of 143 million Americans in one of the largest hacks ever.
The problem is not restricted to the United States.
Equifax said on Friday that data on up to 400,000 Britons was stolen in the hack because it was stored in the United States. The data included names, email addresses and telephone numbers but not street addresses or financial data, Equifax said.
Canada’s privacy commissioner said on Friday that it has launched an investigation into the data breach. Equifax is still working to determine the number of Canadians affected, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada said in a statement.

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The need for more bulk storage isn’t slowing down, and in fact continues to grow at an incredible rate. At one point, a 4TB hard drive seemed like it offered a ton of digital breathing room. Today, that’s not so much the case…
The need for more bulk storage isn’t slowing down, and in fact continues to grow at an incredible rate. At one point, a 4TB hard drive seemed like it offered a ton of digital breathing room. Today, that’s not so much the case. As we capture our photos and videos at higher resolutions (8K is right around the corner), many users will reach a point where they feel they simply can’t have enough storage. And that’s to say nothing of the insatiable appetite for storage in the enterprise and data center.
Earlier this year, HGST blew our minds when it began shipping its first 12TB hard drive, the Ultrastar He12. Now, the WD-owned HGST division is being followed up by WD itself, with the Gold 12TB hard drive, pictured below.
As the « Gold » name suggests, this hard drive series is considered one of the premier offerings by WD. It’s destined for the enterprise, specified with 10X the workload rating of traditional desktop drives, and claimed to be the ultimate blend of power efficiency and performance. It may just be a 7,200 RPM HDD, but the 12TB Gold has got some surprises under its hood.
According to WD, this 12TB Gold drive is the fastest of the entire lineup, peaking at 255MB/s sustained read, versus a not-too-distant 249MB/s on the 10TB (for reference, that number is about 184MB/s on a 1TB drive). Latency numbers are not mentioned, but the 12TB drive matches the 10TB and 8TB in that it comes backed with 256MB of DRAM cache.
An easy-to-overlook fact about this new 12TB drive is that it’s extremely power-efficient. In fact, it’s the most power-efficient drive in the entire Gold line-up. The 10TB and 8TB models peak at 7.1W, while this new 12TB peaks at 7.0W. Also, consider the fact that WD’s 6TB and 4TB models peak at 9.0W+. This matters most of course when you’re looking to roll out dozens or hundreds of these drives in a rack.
As you’d expect with an enterprise offering, WD provides a 5-year warranty with its new Gold drives. Currently, the company is selling the new 12TB model on its own website for $521.99, a $110 premium over the 10TB model. The best stuff doesn’t come cheap but that’s still only about.043 per GiB.

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