Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg accepts that his company may pay more taxes outside the United States as part of a worldwide restructuring of taxation of tech companies, according to reports of a speech he will give on Saturday.
The 35-year-old chief executive is expected to call for an improvement in the way Facebook, Google, and other tech titans pay taxes for their digital businesses. He will back proposals for reforms being discussed at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
“We accept that [the reforms] may mean we have to pay more tax and pay it in different places under a new framework,” Zuckerberg is expected to say at a technology conference in Munich on Saturday, according to excerpts of a speech he will give as reported by Politico.
“I understand that there’s frustration about how tech companies are taxed in Europe. We also want tax reform, and I’m glad the OECD is looking at this,” Zuckerberg notes in his speech.
With growing pressure from the OECD and others in Europe for big tech companies to pay more in taxes, Zuckerberg’s remarks are expected to play well with European politicians he is set to meet with in Germany and Belgium in the coming days.
U.S. government officials are not likely to be on board with Zuckerberg’s openness to pay more taxes abroad, though. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said that any form of global digital tax rules should be optional, a stance that puts the U.S. at odds with most other OECD member nations.
