Today, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) announced the conclusion of the one-year Section 301 investigations of Digital Service Taxes (DSTs) adopted by Austria, India, Italy, Spain, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. The final determination in those investigations is to impose additional tariffs on certain goods from these countries; these additional tariffs are immediately suspended for up to 180 days. This will provide additional time to complete the ongoing multilateral negotiations on international taxation at the OECD and in the G20 process.

 

As background, in January 2021, following comprehensive investigations USTR determined that the DSTs adopted by Austria, India, Italy, Spain, Turkey, and the United Kingdom discriminated against U.S. digital companies, were inconsistent with principles of international taxation, and burdened U.S. companies. Detailed reports on the findings in the investigations may be found here.

Federal Register notices announcing and suspending the trade actions in the six investigations may be found here. The notices also contain a list of HTS codes covering commodities potentially impacted.