Column: Some U.S. tech companies may face European tax

It’s no day at the plage operating a giant, successful, multinational American company, once you’ve run up against some very un-American notions about tax policy from abroad.

Such as the “data tax” on Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, about to be proposed by France for adoption by the European Union.

Apparently, France would like to impose a data transmission tax on those companies -- and only those companies -- because they are the dominant platforms for Internet usage in Europe just as they are in the U.S., but they are “non-European,” that is, American.

Their dominance therefore prevents European competitors from emerging from obscurity. (How taxing the most popular sites will make other sites more popular with consumers is not clear.)