Facebook to pay more than $118 million in back taxes in France

PARIS: Facebook’s French subsidiary has agreed to pay more than 100 million euros ($118 million) in back taxes, including a penalty, after a ten-year audit of its accounts by French tax authorities, the company said on Monday.

France, which is pushing hard to overhaul international tax rules on digital companies such as Facebook, Alphabet’s Google, Apple and Amazon, has said the big tech groups pay too little tax in the country where they have significant sales.

Current international tax rules legally allow companies to funnel sales generated in local markets in Europe to their regional headquarters. Some of the tech companies, including Facebook, have European or international headquarters based in countries with comparatively low corporate tax rates, such as Ireland.

A Facebook spokesman said French tax authorities carried out an audit on Facebook’s accounts over 2009-2018 period, which resulted in an agreement by the subsidiary to pay a total 106 million euros.

The Facebook spokesman did not elaborate further on the details of the agreement. France's tax administration also did not give more details.