The question of taxing the digital economy is one of growing importance but there is lots of global disagreement on the way forward. The industry is so new and growing in unexpected ways. What is clear, though, is that some major multinationals in the sector now make tens of billions of pounds in sales and many make large profits. That is not the story everywhere, though, as many businesses lose money or make very low profits.

France has studied the area for many years and was the joint chair (with the US) of the Digital Taskforce set up by the OECD Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project. The October 2015 report failed to find any new answers.