Philip Hammond, a man so detail-focused as to have earned the nickname “spreadsheet Phil”, looks an unlikely warrior in the latest “tech-lash”.

But this week the UK’s chancellor of the exchequer joined the vanguard of finance ministers fighting back against tax arbitrage by the world’s largest technology companies. In his annual Budget, he proposed to make “global giants with profitable businesses in the UK pay their fair share” through a “digital services tax” on revenues, which could come into force in 2020.

The measure, which would apply only to profitable companies with annual global revenue from certain services of more than £500m, is aimed squarely at the big US companies, such as Amazon, eBay, Facebook and Google.