France could become the first European country to pass laws that will stop online companies avoid paying higher taxes on income earnt in France by shifting it to other lower tax EU regimes.

Senator Philippe Marini, president of the Senate finance committee, has long expressed frustration that global internet giants like Google, Apple and Amazon have managed to avoid hundreds of millions of euros in French VAT and other corporate taxes due to a series of loopholes in EU law and wildly divergent tax regimes.

French politicians are now gearing up to discuss a draft law to raise more revenue by taxing the digital sector in the same way as other sectors in the French Senate in the January 2013.

France, like many European nations, is increasingly looking to raise more revenue in taxes from companies that had previously fallen under the radar. Its tax revenues have been revised downwards by €7.1bn (£5.9bn).

In October, French president Francois Hollande met with Google chairman Eric Schmidt to discuss paying more taxes in France as well as job creation and further investment.

And in the UK earlier this month, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) grilled Google UK's CEO and Amazon's director of public policy.

At the hearing, chief executive of Google northern Europe, Matt Brittin, said that its European HQ was based in Ireland because of its 12.5% corporation tax rate - almost half that of the UK's 24%.

He added that until recently, the Irish-based entity was paying a fee to a Dutch-registered company within Google in a bid to reduce its tax burden.

France recently introduced a law to raise its VAT rate from 19.6% to 20%, as well as a raft of new environmental taxes. Restaurant taxes also rose by 3%.