The French Target FANG Stocks, Apple With New Tax Proposal

Lawmakers in France are targeting a group of companies it labeled as "GAFA" to pay a tax on all streaming video and online films, according to a France based publication called Le Figaro.

The companies, Alphabet Inc GOOG GOOGL's Google unit, Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN, Facebook Inc FB and Apple Inc. AAPL, could be subject to a 2 percent tax on all streaming audio and video. Separately, a 10 percent tax rate on films that are either pornographic or incites violence.

Although not named as part of the "GAFA" acronym, Netflix, Inc. NFLX's business will also be affected.

Karine Berger, a lawmaker in France, along with Bruno Le Roux and Pierre-Alain Muet proposed the law to France's parliament. The proposal calls for directly taxing companies that provide video and audio streaming services, especially since many companies account for their taxes in Ireland where the corporate tax rate is just 12.5 percent.

Smaller online video and streaming sites would still be subject to a tax, but at a smaller rate.

It's not clear how the tax would be overseen and what actually classifies a video as being pornographic or incites violence in nature.

France attempted six years ago to to implement a similar tax, but it failed to pass.