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Paragraph 5和OECD’s current work可定位至第五段。第五段开头指出，针对这些单边措施，经济合作与发展组织目前的工作主要是在2020年年底之前与131个国家就国际解决方案达成共识。接着又说到，美国和法国也参与了这项工作，但法国的数字服务税和美国的回应使人们对国际税收体系的未来产生了疑虑。也就是说，经济合作与发展组织目前的这项工作未来会怎样还不确定，C项中的uncertain对应原文中的raise questions，prospects对应原文中的what the future holds，因此选C。

错项排除：文中说到美国对法国数字税作出对抗性的回应，而不是抵制OECD目前的工作，A项属于张冠李戴，故排除。文中说了目前这项工作的前景不是很乐观，但并没说这项工作需要立刻进行调整，故B项排除。文中说到这项工作有131个国家参与，但并没有说需要更多国家参与，故D项排除。