France Approves €0.55-per-Gigabyte Internet Tax Targeting US Tech Giants

French lawmakers have voted 11-10 to attach a data-traffic levy to the country's next budget, forcing major content providers to pay €0.55 (about $0.62) for every gigabyte delivered to French users. The proposal's authors estimate the tax would raise roughly €10 billion ($11.2 billion) a year. The vote on October 30 passed despite opposition from the government's own side and from the finance committee rapporteur, according to minutes released by the National Assembly.

The amendment comes from socialist lawmaker Laurent Lhardit. It targets companies that generate large volumes of internet traffic rather than taxing advertising revenue, profits or subscriptions.

Who would pay, and how much?

The explanatory notes name Google, Meta, Netflix, Amazon and content delivery network Akamai as major potential contributors. TikTok and similar platforms could also fall under the scope depending on how the rules are applied.

The levy carries two caps:

• 15% of a company's French revenue
• 2% of its worldwide revenue

France counts approximately 154 million internet users. Around 200 billion gigabytes of data pass through French internet providers each year, and the five major companies named in the amendment account for about half of that traffic.

"This amendment proposes a tax on digital data flows emitted by content providers, to be borne by the providers themselves. Its revenue is estimated at €10 billion," Lhardit said.

How would the tax be collected?

Internet service providers — including Orange, Free and Iliad — would measure the volume of data and identify the companies sending it to French subscribers. The data would then be submitted quarterly to France's tax administration under the supervision of telecommunications regulator Arcep.

The proposal also accounts for content delivery networks, which store copies of online content closer to users to cut loading times and reduce network congestion. In practice, that means CDN operators such as Akamai sit inside the measurement chain, not outside it.

The burden on measurement is the design's weak point, and opponents have seized on it.

What do critics say?

Opponents argue the scheme threatens user privacy. Government Minister David Amiel questioned whether traffic could be measured and attributed to specific content providers without building complicated monitoring systems.

The rapporteur has also argued that companies would pass the cost on to consumers. Lhardit rejected that line directly: "The rapporteur keeps arguing that the taxes will be passed on to the consumers. However, I fail to see how a tax can be passed on to users of Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok since these services are free."

He also played down the cost to French businesses, citing broadcaster TF1 as an example of a company that would contribute between €200,000 and €300,000 — modest by comparison with the amounts facing global platforms.

How does this fit the wider EU fight with Big Tech?

Several European countries already run digital service taxes, generally based on revenue from advertising, marketplaces and other digital activities. France's proposal goes further by tying the charge directly to network traffic volumes.

The industry is already adjusting. In March, Meta announced it would introduce location-based fees of between 2% and 5% for advertisers in several countries — including France, Italy and Spain — from July 1, 2026, to offset digital services taxes and other government levies.

The backdrop is a string of European enforcement actions:

• A €5 billion European Commission fine against Google over Android antitrust violations
• A €100 million fine on Facebook for misleading European regulators
• An EU investigation into Facebook's linking of WhatsApp accounts
• Fines of €500 million for Apple and €200 million for Meta last year

Those penalties strained relations between Brussels and Washington. The United States called the fines "a novel form of economic extortion" that it will not tolerate.

What happens next?

The vote is only a first step. The amendment must survive further parliamentary scrutiny inside France's 2027 budget process before it becomes law. Parliament is scheduled to vote on the budget's first section in early November.

If the levy clears those stages, France would move from taxing tech companies' revenues to taxing their traffic — a model that, at €0.55 per gigabyte across 200 billion annual gigabytes, would give other European governments a template and US platforms a fresh bill worth billions.