Taxing the Digital Economy

Taxing the Digital Economy
Author: Craig Elliffe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2021-05-13
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1108617913

The question of how to tax multinational companies that operate highly digitalised business models is one of the most contested areas of international taxation. The tax paid in the jurisdictions in which these companies operate has not kept pace with their immense growth and the OECD has proposed a new international tax compromise that will allocate taxing rights to market jurisdictions and remove the need to have a physical presence in the taxing jurisdictions in order to sustain taxability. In this work, Craig Elliffe explains the problems with the existing international tax system and its inability to respond to challenges posed by digitalised companies. In addition to looking at how the new international tax rules will work, Elliffe assesses their likely effectiveness and highlights features that are likely to endure in the next waves of international tax reform.

Tax and the Digital Economy

Tax and the Digital Economy
Author: Werner Haslehner
Publisher: Kluwer Law International B.V.
Total Pages: 429
Release: 2019-05-01
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9403503351

The increasingly digitalized global economy is undermining the usefulness of many traditional tax concepts. In addition to issues of double taxation and double non-taxation, important questions arise concerning the allocation of taxing rights in respect of income from cross-border digital transactions. This is the first book to analyse what changes are possible, necessary and feasible in order to forestall the unravelling of the existing international tax framework. Focusing in turn on the legal framework, specific proposals for adapting tax concepts for the digital economy, types of transactions and administrative issues such as those around data protection and digital currencies, the expert contributors discuss such challenges to taxation as the following: the pervasiveness of intangible assets; new value creation models; the ascendance of the sharing economy and digital services; virtual currencies; the importance of user participation for digital platforms; cloud computing; the impact of Big Data on tax enforcement; virtual business presence; and the influence of robotization. Throughout, the authors describe and analyse proposals made by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the European Union (EU) and individual countries and their likely impact going forward. They also attend to the limits imposed on reform possibilities by public international law, EU law and constitutional law. It is generally acknowledged that there is a need to monitor how the digital transformation may be impacting value creation. This book is a key milestone toward developing a durable, long-term solution to the tax challenges posed by the digitalization of the economy. With its thorough scrutiny of proposals for digital services tax and virtual permanent establishments, insightful analysis of digital services and detailed description of the impact of big data on tax administration and taxpayer protection, it will quickly prove indispensable for tax practitioners and the international tax community more generally.

The Challenge of the Digital Economy

The Challenge of the Digital Economy
Author: Francesco Boccia
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2017-02-08
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3319436902

This volume presents contributions that analyse the extraordinary impact of digital technology on business, services, and the production of value in many sectors of the economy. At the heart of this book is the fact that the entire digital economy is now worth almost 6% of global GDP, and it continues to grow at an unprecedented rate. The volume covers the general debate on taxation and the digital economy with the chapters by Russo, Makiyama and Boccia, before completing the analysis with discussion of three national case studies covering the U.S. (Pagano), U.K. (Leonardi) and Italy (Boccia and Leonardi). Contributors are leading experts in the fields of taxation and the digital economy and contextualise the key issues surrounding the digitalisation of the economy from an international perspective.

Taxation History, Theory, Law and Administration

Taxation History, Theory, Law and Administration
Author: Parthasarathi Shome
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 507
Release: 2021-04-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3030682145

Tax practitioners are unfamiliar with tax theory. Tax economists remain unfamiliar with tax law and tax administration. Most textbooks relate mainly to the US, UK or European experiences. Students in emerging economies remain unfamiliar with their own taxation history. This textbook fills those gaps. It covers the concept of taxes in regards to their rationale, principles, design, and common errors. It addresses distortions in consumer choices and production decisions caused by tax and redressals. The main principles of taxation—efficiency, equity, stabilization, revenue productivity, administrative feasibility, international neutrality—are presented and discussed. The efficiency principle requires the minimisation of distortions in the market caused by tax. Equity in taxation is another principle that is maintained through progressivity in the tax structure. Similarly, other principles have their own ramifications that are also addressed. A country’s constitutional specification of tax assignment to different levels of government—central, state, municipal—are elaborated. The UK is more centralised than the US and India. India has amended its constitution to introduce a goods and services tax (GST) covering both central and state governments. Drafting of tax law is crucial for clarity and this aspect is addressed. Furthermore, the author illustrates different types of taxes such as individual income tax, corporate income tax, wealth tax, retail sales/value added/goods and services tax, selective excises, property tax, minimum taxes such as the minimum alternate tax (MAT), cash-flow tax, financial transactions tax, fringe benefits tax, customs duties and export taxes, environment tax and global carbon tax, and user charges. An emerging concern regarding the inadequacy of international taxation of multinational corporations is covered in some detail. Structural aspects of tax administration are given particular attention.

Tax Law and Digitalization: The New Frontier for Government and Business

Tax Law and Digitalization: The New Frontier for Government and Business
Author: Jeffrey Owens
Publisher: Kluwer Law International B.V.
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2021-09-15
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9403534044

New technologies are changing the way that tax administrations, taxpayers and their advisers interact, leading to a reduction in the compliance cost for taxpayers, a level playing field for large and small businesses, and fewer opportunities to engage in aggressive tax practices. Although entering a new world where processes are supported by machines inevitably disrupts traditional ways of working, the contributors to this indispensable book reveal the enormous potential of ‘tax technology’ to positively transform tax compliance, clearly showing both government and business how to manage the transition from the old to the new. With detailed treatment of the technology available in the tax field, the authors describe how to secure its benefits in such ways as the following: electronic balance sheets and invoices; automated transmission to tax authorities; innovative analytics applications; blockchain in tax law processes; process mining in VAT; real-time reporting with cryptography; and meeting the challenges to taxpayers’ rights to privacy and personal data protection. The contributions draw on an international conference held under the auspices of the Digital Economy Taxation Network at the Vienna University of Economics and Business in December 2020. The perspective throughout focuses on how to achieve better tax compliance at a lower cost. For this reason, this full-scale, practical guide on how to adapt tax law to new technologies and how to apply tax tech processes in practice will be welcomed by tax practitioners, tax administrations, and academics across the entire tax community.

Tax Sovereignty and the Law in the Digital and Global Economy

Tax Sovereignty and the Law in the Digital and Global Economy
Author: Francesco Farri
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2020-09-27
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1000217485

This book discusses which is the most appropriate tax dimension to best manage the new horizons of the global and digital economy. In this perspective, the efficiency of the main models is examined and two fundamental proposals are put forth: the first one aims at a coordination of the Destination-Based approach with the role of some specific digital assets, such as user data; the second one is a framework for a possible futuristic tax phenomenon all internal to the world of the internet and not linked to traditional territorial States. The compliance of these models with the constitutional principles that western democratic systems have affirmed over time in matters of taxation is then analyzed with particular regard to legal certainty, consent to taxation and to the re-distributive function of taxes. A specific evaluation of the role of the European Union is carried out and the jurisprudence on financial interests of the Union and on State aids is analyzed and tackled in light of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and of the tax sovereignty of member States. The conclusion is that the model of the organization with a general political purpose, from which modern States take their inspiration, appears unfailing for a tax project that would focus on the good and the growth of the person and of the social aggregations in which everyone lives. A model that therefore deserves to be safeguarded, although with new methods and instruments, starting from a Destination-Based Asset-Coordinated approach, in the Third Millennium. The book will be of interest to researchers and academics in international tax law, constitutional law and in political science.

The Role of Digital Platforms in the Collection of VAT/GST on Online Sales

The Role of Digital Platforms in the Collection of VAT/GST on Online Sales
Author: OECD
Publisher: OECD Publishing
Total Pages: 88
Release: 2019-06-20
Genre:
ISBN: 926434411X

This report provides practical guidance to tax authorities on the design and implementation of a variety of solutions for digital platforms, including e-commerce marketplaces, in the effective and efficient collection of VAT/GST on the digital trade of goods, services and intangibles. In particular, it includes new measures to make digital platforms liable for the VAT/GST on sales made by online traders through these platforms, along with other measures including data sharing and enhanced co-operation between tax authorities and digital platforms.

Corporate Income Taxes under Pressure

Corporate Income Taxes under Pressure
Author: Ruud A. de Mooij
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2021-02-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1513511777

The book describes the difficulties of the current international corporate income tax system. It starts by describing its origins and how changes, such as the development of multinational enterprises and digitalization have created fundamental problems, not foreseen at its inception. These include tax competition—as governments try to attract tax bases through low tax rates or incentives, and profit shifting, as companies avoid tax by reporting profits in jurisdictions with lower tax rates. The book then discusses solutions, including both evolutionary changes to the current system and fundamental reform options. It covers both reform efforts already under way, for example under the Inclusive Framework at the OECD, and potential radical reform ideas developed by academics.

Taxing Global Digital Commerce

Taxing Global Digital Commerce
Author: Arthur Cockfield
Publisher: Kluwer Law International B.V.
Total Pages: 529
Release: 2019-11-07
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9041167110

Digital commerce – the use of computer networks to facilitate transactions involving the production, distribution, sale, and delivery of goods and services – has grown from merely streamlining relations between consumer and business to a much more robust phenomenon embracing efficient business processes within a firm and between firms. Inevitably, the related taxation issues have grown as well. This latest edition of the preeminent text on the taxation of digital transactions revises, updates and expands the book’s coverage. It includes a detailed and up-to-date analysis of income tax and VAT developments regarding digital commerce under the OECD and G20 Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) reforms. It explores the implications of digital commerce for US state sales and use tax regimes resulting from the 2018 US Supreme Court decision in Wayfair. It discusses cross-border tax in the United States while continuing to focus on tax developments throughout the world. Analysing the practical tax consequences of digital commerce from a multijurisdictional perspective, and using examples to illustrate the application of different taxes to digital commerce transactions, the book offers in-depth treatment of such topics as the following: how tax rules governing cross-border digital commerce are increasingly applied to all cross-border activities; how tax rules and institutional processes have evolved to confront challenges posed by digital commerce; how an emerging ‘tax war’ is developing whereby different countries are unilaterally imposing new tax rules on cross-border digital commerce; how technology enhances tax and cross-border tax information exchanges; how technology reduces both compliance and enforcement costs; cross-border consumption tax issues raised by cloud computing; and different approaches to the legal design of VAT place of taxation rules. The authors offer insightful views on the likely development of new approaches to taxing cross-border digital commerce. This edition, while building on the analysis of the relationship between traditional tax laws and the Internet in the first edition and its predecessors, contains a more explicit and systematic consideration of digital commerce issues and the ongoing policy responses to them. Tax professionals and academics everywhere will welcome the important contribution it makes towards the design of cross-border tax rules that are both conceptually sound and practical in application. ‘A tour de force … much larger and richer than its predecessors … a massive contribution to the growing literature on the taxation of e-commerce.’ – Rita de la Feria, British Tax Review ‘Provides important understandings for ongoing policy discussions … I would warmly recommend.’ – P. Rendahl, World Journal of VAT/GST Law