Apple, Google, and Amazon have all announced price increases for UK enterprise customers specifically designed to offset a new “digital services tax” introduced by UK government. This increases tax on any revenue produced by “search engines, social media services and online marketplaces” by 2 percent.
In response, Apple is increasing its cut of developer fees on the App Store for UK developers by 2 percent, while Google is increasing fees for all advertising bought on Google Ads and YouTube in the UK by 2 percent as well. “Digital service taxes increase the cost of digital advertising,” a Google spokeswoman told The Guardian regarding the news. “Typically, these kinds of cost increases are borne by customers and like other companies affected by this tax, we will be adding a fee to our invoices, from November.”
From September 1st, Amazon is also increasing fees for third-party sellers by 2 percent. It told sellers it had previously held off on this increase while the UK’s digital service tax was being discussed, but “now that the legislation has passed, we want to inform you that we will be increasing Referral fees, Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) fees, monthly FBA storage fees and Multichannel Fulfilment (MCF) fees by 2% in the UK to reflect this additional cost.”
Included in the list were four countries whose new digital services taxes (DSTs) have prompted Apple to up its fees for developers: France, Italy, the UK, and Turkey.
Such increases are not that unusual. Apple, for example, regularly tweaks its App Store fees in response to differences in countries’ tax regimes and currency valuation. The iPhone-maker increased App Store prices for UK consumers by 25 percent after the pound lost value following the Brexit vote, for example. But this particular set of responses does send a message to politicians in countries hoping to increase their tax revenues from US tech firms: try to make us pay more and we’ll just pass it on.
“The Regulatory Operating Costs are being added due to significant increases in the complexity and cost of complying with regulations in Turkey. In Austria and the United Kingdom, the DST Fee is driven by the new digital services tax in these countries,”.
