Poland will continue working on legislation to tax digital platforms, Finance Minister Andrzej Domanski said, despite threats of retaliation from the U.S. administration of Donald Trump.
The legislation, which seeks to introduce a levy of up to 3% on digital platforms, has been criticized as unfair and harmful by U.S. tech giants including Alphabet Inc.'s Google.
"Representatives of the U.S. administration are expressing far-reaching skepticism, but I remain firm — we are the ones who set taxes in Poland," PAP news agency quoted Domanski as saying on Wednesday.
The tax is one of several issues that could come to divide Warsaw and Washington. Domanski's announcement comes after Trade Representative Jamieson Greer
Greer said at the hearing on Monday that he'd shown Domanski a copy of a U.S. report on the French digital services tax from Trump's first term that resulted in U.S. tariffs on Paris.
"I said, 'I really don't want to be in a situation where I have to put out a report that says Poland here instead of France,'" Greer said, adding that he thought Domanski "received the message."
The fate of Poland's digital tax legislation has been uncertain since it was first initiated by Deputy Premier Krzysztof Gawkowski, who also runs the Digital Affairs Ministry, last year.
The tax would apply to firms with global revenues above €1 billion ($1.1 billion) and at least 25 million zloty ($6.9 million) in revenues reported in Poland. However, Domanski said last year his ministry wasn't working on the draft law and that he saw low chances for the levy to be introduced.
Gawkowski told Bloomberg on the sidelines of the ImpactCEE conference on Wednesday that the draft will be sent to other ministries for consultations in late May or June and that its main provisions won't be changed.
