France is preparing to impose taxes on Apple and Google to finance the production of art, films and music in the country.
The move would see the French government tax the sales of smartphones and tablets in the country, including Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android products, to help fund culture ‘because consumers were spending more money on hardware than on content’.
“Companies that make these tablets must, in a minor way, be made to contribute part of the revenue from their sales to help creators,” Culture Minister Aurelie Filipetti told journalists.
French President Francois Hollande is believed to want a decision on this made by the summer before the French parliament goes into recess at the end of July.
Filipetti added that the “culture tax”, which she said would be “minimal and widely distributed”, was likely to be included in a budget law to be submitted to parliament in November.
The president has asked businessman Pierre Lescure to find ways of funding the arts, as the economy continues to struggle.
It has long been a concern of the French that their culture is being eroded by the steady march of anglo-saxon artistic output. Thus there is a tradition that French cultural projects should be shielded from market forces.
A recent bid from Yahoo to buy the French video site Dailymotion was blocked on such grounds, despite the French owners of Dailymotion being keen on the deal.
Another recent move saw French news publishers accuse Google of stealing content, when they added snippets of a story to Google News. Google ended up paying $60 million into a Digital Publishers Innovation Fund.
These moves are likely to heighten tensions between Silicon Valley and France.
France slipped back into recession in the first quarter of this year and the European Commission expects the economy to contract 0.1% in 2013.
