personal tech

Poll finds two-thirds support squeeze on Silicon Valley despite US pressure

The majority of Britons still believe Big Tech should be contributing more to the public purse, new research suggests.

Polling by the Fair Tax Foundation, shared with The Register, found that 67 percent of respondents believe the UK should ensure large technology companies such as Meta, Google, Apple, and Amazon pay more in Digital Services Tax (DST) to increase their overall tax contribution.

The same proportion of Brits said the government should aim to become a world leader in regulating cryptocurrencies and other digital assets to help prevent tax avoidance and evasion.

The findings arrive as the future of the UK's Digital Services Tax continues to attract scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic. Introduced in 2020, the levy was designed to extract more money from online giants that generate substantial revenues from UK users while often reporting profits elsewhere. Last year alone, the tax raised around £800 million for the Treasury.

Not everyone has been thrilled by the arrangement. President Donald Trump threatened in April to impose a "big tariff" on British imports if the government refused to drop the Digital Services Tax, arguing it unfairly targets US tech giants. 

The British public, however, appear less concerned, and the polling suggests support extends well beyond the digital tax itself. Three-quarters of respondents said they would prefer to work for a company that can demonstrate it pays its fair share of tax, while 74 percent said they would rather spend money with such a business. More than seven in ten backed requiring fair tax practices from companies bidding for public sector contracts, while 82 percent supported similar requirements for firms receiving government bailout funds.

The research forms part of the Fair Tax Foundation's annual survey of public attitudes toward corporate tax conduct, released during Fair Tax Week.

Paul Monaghan, chief executive of the organization, said the findings showed that tax fairness remains one of the public's biggest concerns regarding corporate behavior and argued that politicians have a clear mandate to push for greater transparency.

"The UK public care about many issues, but 'tax justice' is consistently at the top of their concerns when it comes to corporate conduct," he said. "The days of large multinationals such as Amazon refusing to disclose what their income, profit, and corporate taxes are in the UK need to end. As does the almost complete absence of tax transparency we see from the vast majority of micro-enterprises – which is helping to fuel fraud across the country."

That may prove easier said than done. Governments have spent years trying to agree on an international framework for taxing multinational corporations, with varying degrees of success and enthusiasm. Until then, the UK's stopgap solution appears to retain something increasingly rare in modern politics: broad public support.

For all the complaints from Big Tech and the US government, most Britons seem perfectly content for HMRC to keep rattling the collection tin outside Silicon Valley's front door. ®