Italy agrees with US to oppose ‘discriminatory’ tech taxes

On Friday, Italy and the United States released a joint statement opposing “discriminatory” taxes on digital services, potentially indicating Rome’s shift from a tax that has annoyed Washington.

The remark was made as Meloni participated in consecutive transatlantic meetings with Donald Trump and his deputy JD Vance, receiving a friendly reception from the U.S. president that stood in stark contrast to his cooler approach towards other European leaders.

European taxes targeting major U.S. technology firms like Alphabet’s Google , Meta’s Facebook, Apple, and Amazon have long been a source of frustration for U.S. administrations, including Trump’s.

“We agreed that a non-discriminatory environment in terms of digital services taxation is necessary to enable investments from cutting-edge tech companies,” Rome and Washington said following Meloni’s visit to the White House on Thursday.

Italy imposes a 3% tax on income from online transactions for digital firms generating at least 750 million euros ($853.35 million), yielding under 500 million euros in annual revenue for the government.

The statement – which additionally mentioned that Trump would make an official trip to Italy soon – did not specify if Rome had agreed to eliminate the tax. Although the measure produces a comparatively minor amount of revenue in a nation with total budget expenditures exceeding 800 billion euros, the Italian web tax remains a contentious matter for Meloni.

Political sources indicated that while she faces pressure from the U.S., members of her ruling coalition are urging her to intensify demands on large tech companies in order to obtain the funding required for expensive initiatives without burdening Italy’s delicate public finances.

The joint statement also welcomed U.S. investments in AI computing and cloud services in Italy to aid Italy in becoming the primary regional data hub for the Mediterranean and North Africa. Amazon’s cloud division AWS announced last year that it plans to invest 1.2 billion euros in Italy over five years to further grow its data center operations in the nation.