Last Thursday, the French Senate passed a digital services tax, which would impose an entirely new tax on large multinationals that provide digital services to consumers or users in France. Digital services include everything from providing a platform for selling goods and services online to targeting advertising based on user data, and the tax applies to gross revenue from such services. Many French politicians and media outlets have referred to this as a “GAFA tax”, meaning that it is designed to apply primarily to companies such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon—in other words, multinational tech companies based in the United States.

    The digital services tax now awaits the signature of President Emmanuel Macron, who has expressed support for the measure, and it could go into effect within the next few weeks. But it has already sparked significant controversy, with the United States trade representative opening an investigation into whether the tax discriminates against American companies, which in turn could lead to trade sanctions against France.

    The French tax is not just a unilateral move by one country in need of revenue. Instead, the digital services tax is part of a much larger trend, with countries over the past few years proposing or putting in place an alphabet soup of new international tax provisions. These have included Britain’s DPT (diverted profits tax), Australia’s MAAL (multinational anti-avoidance law), and India’s SEP (significant economic presence) test, to name but a few. At the same time, the European Union, Spain, Britain and several other countries have all seriously contemplated digital services taxes.

    These unilateral developments differ in their specifics, but they are all designed to tax multinationals on income and revenue that countries believe they should have a right to tax, even if international tax rules do not grant them that right. In other words, they all share a view that the international tax system has failed to keep up with the current economy.

    In response to these many unilateral measures, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is currently working with 131 countries to reach a consensus by the end of 2020 on an international solution. Both France and the United States are involved in the organization’s work, but France’s digital services tax and the American response raise questions about what the future holds for the international tax system.

    France’s planned tax is a clear warning: Unless a broad consensus can be reached on reforming the international tax system, other nations are likely to follow suit, and American companies will face a cascade of different taxes from dozens of nations that will prove burdensome and costly.

答案精析：本题为细节题。根据题干中的The French Senate可定位至原文第一段第一句。该句指出，法国参议院在上周四通过了一项数字服务税，征收对象主要是大型跨国公司。在第一段最后，特别表明这些公司主要是指总部设在美国的跨国科技公司。C项中的impose是文中原词，levy是对文中tax的同义替换，tech multinationals是对文中large multinationals和multinational tech companies的同义替换，因此选C。

错项排除：A项利用文中出现的digital services和 platform设置干扰，但文章中说的是数字服务包括出售商品和服务的平台，并未说这项议案是要规范数字服务平台，故A项排除。文中明确说到，这项税收是针对提供数字服务的跨国公司，并未涉及对法国本土企业的描述，故B项排除。D项利用原文词advertising进行干扰，但文中出现advertising的地方依然是在说数字服务所包括的内容，并非是要表达这项税收议案的目的是抑制广告的影响，故D项排除。