Italy agrees with US to oppose 'discriminatory' tech taxes

(Changes headline and lead, adds details, sources and background) WASHINGTON, April 18 (Reuters) - Italy and the United States issued a joint statement against “discriminatory” taxes on digital services on Friday, in a possible signal Rome is moving away from a levy that has irked Washington. The statement came as Meloni held back-to-back transatlantic meetings with Donald Trump and his deputy JD Vance, winning a warm welcome from the U.S. president that contrasted with his frostier treatment of other European leaders. European levies aimed at hitting dominant U.S. tech giants such as Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL.O) , Meta’s Facebook (META.O) , Apple (AAPL.O) and Amazon (AMZN.O) have been a longstanding irritant for U.S. administrations, including Trump’s. Italy applies a 3% levy on revenue from internet transactions for digital companies with sales of at least 750 million euros ($853.35 million), which is worth less than 500 million euros in revenue for the state each year. “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. The statement - which also said Trump would pay an official visit to Italy in the near future - did not clarify whether Rome had committed to scrapping the tax. Despite the relatively small level of revenue the measure generates in a country with total budget spending topping 800 billion euros, the Italian web tax is a thorny issue for Meloni. While she has to deal with the U.S. pressure, parties in her ruling coalition want her to increase pressure on big tech to secure funding needed to adopt costly measures without straining Italy’s fragile public finances, political sources said. Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti said on Thursday that negotiations with the U.S. on big tech taxation should be conducted bilaterally, not through the EU, adding he would meet Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent next week at a G20 gathering. The joint statement also welcomed American investments in AI computing and cloud services in Italy to support Italy as the key regional data hub for the Mediterranean and North Africa. Amazon’s computing unit AWS said last year it would invest 1.2 billion euros in Italy over five years in a further expansion of its data centre business in the country. ($1 = 0.8789 euros)