France can tax whatever it wants. But it should later complain if this provokes a tit-for-tat reaction from the US or other trading partners if they decide to tax French imports.
I know it's not a popular argument here but I genuinely fear a future world with escalating tarrifs and trade barriers and I think there is a huge amount of FUD spread about how international trade works.
http://economic-incentives.blogspot.com/2016/03/apple-sales-...
You can also read up the numbers in official EU documents:
http://ec.europa.eu/competition/state_aid/cases/253200/25320...
>Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy, said: "Member States cannot give tax benefits to selected companies – this is illegal under EU state aid rules. The Commission's investigation concluded that Ireland granted illegal tax benefits to Apple, which enabled it to pay substantially less tax than other businesses over many years. In fact, this selective treatment allowed Apple to pay an effective corporate tax rate of 1 per cent on its European profits in 2003 down to 0.005 per cent in 2014."
You're quoting a number from the Vestager ruling as if it were generally accepted but it has been contested and currently up to the European Court of Justice to decide whether she was correct in her interpretation.
France tried something similar against Google and it was thrown out twice by French courts - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-google-tax/google-... - because the attempt to tax Google for value generated in the US does not comply with international transfer pricing rules.
France says internet giants circumvent their tax system (and it‘s obvious they do). It‘s France right to try to stop that.