Facebook intends to welcome higher taxes in Europe – Portions of leaked statement reveal

Facebook intends to welcome higher taxes in Europe – Portions of leaked statement reveal

- Facebook intends to accept reforms that would lead to the payment of more taxes in Europe

- The planned acceptance forms part of a statement to be released by the CEO, Mark Zuckerberg on Saturday, February 15, 2020

- Some European countries have called for increased taxes for the technology firm but this has been challenged by Donald Trump

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A planned statement to be released on Saturday, February 15, 2020, by the chief executive officer (CEO) of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, shows the company is happy to pay more taxes in Europe.

Excerpts of his intended speech were reportedly sighted by the BBC and Telegraph, Business Insider reports.

This comes in the wake of drawn-up bills for taxing revenue generated by big technology companies such as Facebook in European countries such as Britain and France.

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A portion of the reported speech reads: "I understand that there's frustration about how tech companies are taxed in Europe.

We also want tax reform and I'm glad the OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] is looking at this.

We want the OECD process to succeed so that we have a stable and reliable system going forward. And we accept that may mean we have to pay more tax and pay it in different places under a new framework."

This has however led to some clashes with the United States of America (USA).

The USA claims the move is a discrimination against American companies.

YEN.com.gh understands that technology firms such as Facebook have historically employed tactics to minimize the taxes they pay in the European Union.

This includes routing taxes through countries such as Ireland, which has favourable tax laws.

President Macron of France has meanwhile agreed to hold off an attempt to implement a 3% tax.

The decision was reached after Donald Trump warned of tariffs on French goods such as wine and cheese.

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In other news, American technology company, IBM, has announced its intent to hand over the accounts of its employees to cloud-based proprietary instant messaging platform, Slack.

The deal soon led to an increase of 21% in Slack’s share price, aside making IBM Slack’s biggest client.

Per a report by Business Insider, IBM is set to deploy the messaging tool to all of its 350,000 employees across the globe.

YEN.com.gh understands that this comes as the best trading session since Slack’s first day as a public company on June 20, 2019.

Reports, however, indicate that some IBM employees have been using Slack since 2014 and the partnership between the two brands began two years later.

This changed in late 2019 when IBM decided to go “all in”, thereby becoming the platform’s largest customer.

The new development comes as a huge win for Slack whose stock fell about 11% in November 2019.

It also follows an announcement of Microsoft’s rival messaging service, Teams, which had 20 million daily active users by then.

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