WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram: Spain announces tax on messaging apps
WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram and others are in the sights of Spain. The Spanish government has just announced a tax on instant messaging applications. At the request of telecommunications operators, a bill aims to regulate the sector from next year.
As part of the Spain Digital 2020-2025 project, the Spanish government is preparing a tax on instant messaging applications, report our colleagues from Les Echos. It all started with the criticisms made by several Spanish operators. Telecoms feel aggrieved by the freedom displayed by WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram or Facebook Messenger when their activities are similar to theirs. However, operators are strictly supervised, taxed, and regulated.
“I am not asking that they be regulated, but if they are not regulated, then I will too be deregulated! Because it is impossible to compete if the conditions are not the same for everyone ”complained recently José María Álvarez-Pallete López, CEO of Telefonica, one of the most important operators in Spain.
Spanish bill wants to consider WhatsApp, Messenger, and Telegram as operators
The bill put forward by Spain provides for setting the record straight by uniformly taxing all call and instant messaging services. From now on, courier services will be considered as operators. They will therefore have to apply the legislation introduced in 2014 and register in the Spanish register of communications operators. Ultimately, services will have to pay one euro for every thousand euros invoiced in Spain if this turnover exceeds one million euros. For now, we do not know how this bill will include WhatsApp, Messenger, or Telegram, services that are not billed to users.
Roberto Sánchez, Secretary of State for Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructures believes that services like WhatsApp, ultra-popular in the country, have “changed the way we consume communication services”. Still laconic, this bill will be examined by the Spanish Parliament in the course of the second quarter of 2021. It is not the first that a country seeks to tax courier services. In 2018, Uganda introduced a tax of 17 € to all users of WhatsApp, Messenger, and Viber in order to combat the spread of gossip.