RTVE leads tax lobby against global streamers
June 3, 2021
From David del Valle in Madrid
Spain’s pubcaster RTVE is trying to invigorate a lobby group of European public TV stations to pressurise global streaming platforms to pay taxes in the countries where they operate.
The president of RTVE, José Manuel Pérez Tornero, will meet this week with his counterparts in Germany, France and Italy to agree to lobby through the European Commission for the streaming platforms “to pay taxes and fees”. “Why don’t they pay their taxes,” asked Pérez Tornero referring to Netflix, Amazon and HBO, adding,”we have to make our voice heard”.
The Spanish government is drafting new legislation to force the streaming platforms to pay a sales tax related to the level of their subscriptions.
Meanwhile, RTVE is now in process of developing its own multimedia platform to sell its content worldwide. “This is a new window, and we have to exploit it,” Pérez Tornero concluded.