Italian tax authorities argue that user registrations with X, LinkedIn and Meta platforms should be seen as taxable transactions as they imply the exchange of a membership account in return for a user’s personal data.
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The case could ultimately be extended to the 27-nation European Union since VAT is a harmonised EU tax, and force a rethink of the business model of the tech industry.
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The Italian approach could affect almost all companies, from airlines to supermarkets to publishers, who link access to free services on their sites to users’ acceptance of profiling cookies.
We have been discussing this for a while (I work in finance). I have not made a final opinion on that, but the idea is not so far fetched (to use your word) as it seems in my humble opinion. The private data we are giving to tech company have a monetary value very much as we would pay money. I don’t say (yet) it should be taxed, though. I am not yet sure, but I wouldn’t reject the idea entirely either.
But then wouldn’t it make sense to tax their income / profit; after they converted our data to a monetary value (to use your word)?
Question would be how to track sales of said data outside of Italy.
Yes, income tax in another topic, though. The point here is VAT, which is a consumption tax. These are two different things. It wouldn’t affect the income tax regime.