Large digital platforms pay on average 15% in taxes, while European traders, artisans and small and medium-sized enterprises pay almost double that rate.
55% confidence
EconomyEuropean Union
Omissions
The documented official comparison is 9.5% (digital business models) versus 23.2–23.3% (traditional businesses), from the European Commission's 2018 digital tax impact assessment — data that is now around eight years old and predates the Pillar Two minimum tax.
The 15% figure coincides with the Pillar Two minimum effective corporate tax rate for large multinationals (in force in the EU since 2024), not with the average effective rate actually paid by large digital platforms.
No independent source found confirms that EU traders, artisans and small and medium-sized enterprises face an effective corporate tax rate of about 30% (i.e. 'almost double' 15%).
The specific magnitudes in the claim could not be corroborated by a primary official source covering the period up to the 2026 session date; the closest official benchmark (9.5% vs 23.2–23.3%) is from 2018.
The claim presents the ratio as 'almost double', whereas the documented 9.5% vs 23.2–23.3% gap is a factor of roughly 2.4 (more than double), so the speaker understates the differential even while overstating the absolute figures.
Sources
PrimaryEU Tax Observatory — 2024-2025 Annual ReportA new EU Tax Observatory analysis shows that the effective tax rate of multinational companies in the EU fell by 2.7 percentage points between 2014 and 2022, driven in part by tax competition among Member States.