Amazon and Facebook must give back with revenues tax after pandemic boom, Chancellor urges

TECH giants that have boomed in the pandemic must now give back with a tax on their revenues.

That is the message Rishi Sunak will deliver to fellow finance chiefs as Britain starts its presidency of the G7.

The Chancellor will meet counterparts from the world’s powerhouses this afternoon — and the “Amazon and Facebook Tax” will be top of his agenda.

Britain will host the annual gathering of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the United States.

The world leaders will meet in Cornwall in June — but the finance ministers are the first to get together via Zoom. Mr Sunak has tried to tax tech firms two per cent of their UK revenues.

But the global firms use sophisticated structures, moving money and assets around as well as ­basing themselves offshore so it is hard to establish true revenues.

Mr Sunak wants to use this year to set up a global effort to target these profits, coordinated by the G7 group. Global attempts to clamp down on US tech giants faltered after fierce resistance from Donald Trump when he was president.

But Mr Sunak’s allies say there is growing hope of “more scope” with the new Joe Biden administration in the White House.

A Treasury source said: “The post-pandemic world is going to look different and it’s right that we work together to find a global agreement on how profits are taxed for online companies to level up the playing field.”

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