EU considers plan to widen corporate levy to reach US Big Tech without provoking Trump

Brussels is looking at a way to pull more money out of Apple, Google, and Meta while giving Washington no reason to retaliate against it. 

The country is considering including the tech giants in a flat levy placed on every large company operating in the bloc.

Is the EU going to impose more taxes on US big tech companies?

The EU is considering using an existing proposal called the Corporate Resource for Europe, or CORE, as a vehicle to impose a flat levy on tech giants operating in the region without provoking retaliation from the U.S. 

CORE requires companies above a certain size to hand over a fixed yearly payment of between €100,000 and €750,000. The European Commission is now considering rewriting that rule so it would apply the charge to any firm doing business in the EU with an annual revenue above €100 million (roughly $112.32 million).

The approach avoids naming the American companies it is partly meant to target. One EU official reportedly stated that some European capitals shy away from imposing a straightforward digital tax due to an unwillingness to antagonize the Americans. The official also pointed out that many more of these capitals object to CORE. 

The hesitation is understandable, considering that in June, President Donald Trump threatened a 100% tariff on goods from any country that imposes a digital services tax on U.S. firms. He wrote that the penalty would hit “any and all Goods” and override trade deals already on the books. 

That warning came shortly before a July 4 deadline linked to a framework agreed in May, which limits most tariffs on EU exports to 15%.

Washington previously called the EU’s attempts to impose duties on its big tech companies discriminatory, but the proposed levy will include European manufacturers, retailers and banks alongside Silicon Valley giants. 

Why can’t Europe tax U.S. companies easily?

Europe’s finance ministers abandoned an EU-wide digital tax in March 2019, as skeptics warned it would draw Trump’s ire and dent competitiveness. 

The think tank ECIPE noted that the Commission dropped a proposed digital levy from its budget plans in July 2025, again under U.S. trade pressure. In the meantime, France, Italy, Spain and Austria have gone ahead with their own national digital taxes. 

In 2019, the USTR concluded that France’s digital services tax singled out Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon and prepared duties of up to 100% on $2.4 billion of French products.

Washington has sharply criticized the EU’s regulatory crackdown on American tech, particularly following the European Commission’s €890 million fine against Google under the Digital Markets Act (DMA)—comprising €460 million for search self-preferencing and €430 million for Google Play Store anti-steering practices. Cryptopolitan reported that the fine itself is another challenge, with Google appealing EU orders to share search data and open Android to rivals.