Zuckerberg to say Facebook will accept more taxes, new rules

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to deliver remarks on Saturday in Germany expressing his company’s acceptance of having to pay more taxes under global tax reforms.

“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 [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] is looking at this,” excerpts of Zuckerberg’s speech read, Reuters reports.

“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,” he added.

Last month, the OECD said that government officials have agreed to draft a new set of tax rules that would dictate where taxes should be paid and the percentage of profit that should be taxed.

At the moment, tech giants like Facebook, Google and Amazon are able to file taxes in countries with low tax rates, even though they operate globally.

For example, in the United Kingdom, Facebook only paid $37.2 million in corporation tax in 2018 but made a record $2.1 billion in British sales that year.

President Trump has threatened retaliatory trade tariffs if new digital taxes are levied, as the White House views them as discriminatory against the U.S.’s big tech companies.