Brussels to Send Tax Collectors Door-to-Door Across Europe in Armored Convoy to Spare Trump's Feelings
The European Commission has launched a physical door-to-door collection tour of US tech giants' European headquarters, with armored convoys and a fixed annual contribution, all designed to avoid singling out Apple, Meta, and Google by name.
The European Commission began dispatching armored convoys of tax assessors to the European headquarters of every large corporation on the continent this week, a physical door-to-door collection tour designed to raise revenue without ever naming Apple, Meta, or Google aloud. The assessors, traveling in convoys of unmarked vans, will visit each company's offices in person to collect a fixed annual contribution from any firm with revenue above €100 million.
«We have found a way to tax the American tech giants without upsetting anyone,» said a Commission official, speaking from inside a van parked outside a data center in Dublin. «We simply knock on every door in Europe. If we happen to knock on the doors of certain very large American companies, that is a coincidence of geography, not a digital tax.»
The tour, officially named the Corporate Resource for Europe Listening Exercise, will run from 2028 to 2034 and is expected to raise €6.8 billion annually. Assessors have been issued scripts in eleven languages, all of which begin with the phrase «This is not about you specifically.»
By Thursday, convoys had reached Luxembourg, where they reportedly spent four hours circling a single office building while an official read the names of every company in Europe alphabetically, pausing only to skip three letters.
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