THE United States and several European countries are expected to announce as soon as this week the details of an agreement to end a long-running trade battle over digital taxes that ensnared the largest American tech firms including Facebook Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. The deal will include the United States, U.K., France, Italy, Spain and Austria, with the European countries pledging to withdraw so-called digital services taxes (DSTs) when a broader international pact on corporate taxation comes into force between now and 2023, according to sources. In exchange for abolishing their national digital taxes in the future, European governments expect the United States to drop the threat of retaliatory tariffs, two of the sources said. European countries had imposed the levies on digital revenue of big firms as they said such companies were subject to effective rates far below their brick-and-mortar peers. In doing so, the nations also sought to put pressure on the United States to engage in talks to find a global solution for taxation based on profits. The breakthrough would end more than two years of a transatlantic confrontation that overshadowed negotiations on how to share the rights to tax the world’s largest companies. Both sides have at times used the digital taxes and related tariffs to leverage the global multilateral talks, which produced an agreement earlier in October. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which presided over the negotiations, had warned that without a deal, disputes like those between the United States and Europe could strip more than 1 percent off world economic output annually. While neither U.S. nor European officials have publicly confirmed that retaliatory tariffs imposed by Washington over the DSTs would be eliminated, Treasury spokeswoman Alexandra LaManna said a deal “should put an end to tax and trade disputes with our European allies.” In 2019, amid slow progress at the OECD, France was the first European country to impose a levy — 3 percent — on the digital revenues of large firms. The United States responded with retaliatory tariffs against France and subsequently against others that adopted similar taxes, claiming the levies discriminated unfairly against U.S. firms. The tariffs never took effect, however, as both sides navigated toward a negotiated resolution. (SD-Agencies) | 