EU’s Digital Tax Proposal Will Hurt Trade, U.S. Businesses Warn (1)

The European Union’s short-term tax targeted at digital advertising is aimed solely at U.S. tech companies Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. and enhances risks of trade retaliation, business tax lobbyists and researchers said.

The digital tax proposal, which will be decided by EU finance ministers in March, “fails to learn the lessons of the past year,” U.S. Council for International Business Tax Committee Chairman William Sample said Jan. 29.

“They have now come full circle,’' Sample, who formerly headed the tax office for Microsoft Corp., told Bloomberg Tax after speaking at an EU Economic and Social Committee hearing ...