Taxation In The Digital Economy

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.

This book analyzes the tax disruptive aspects of new digital business models to determine the need for new tax measures to address the tax challenges of the digitalization of the economy, and presents a proposal for the adoption of a Digital Data Tax (DDT) and a Global Internet Tax Agency (GITA).

Addressing base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) is a key priority of governments. In 2013, OECD and G20 countries, working together on an equal footing, adopted a 15-point Action Plan to address BEPS. This publication is the final report for Action 1.

Highly digitalised businesses threaten the viability of the international corporate tax system. Can a new system overcome these challenges?

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.

The ever-increasing digitalization of businesses has accelerated the need to address the many shortcomings and unresolved issues within the international corporate income tax system. In particular, the customer or “user”—through their online activities—is now considered by many as being a critical driving force behind the value of digital services. Furthermore, the rapid growth of digital service providers over the last decade has made them an increasingly popular target for special taxes—similar to wealth and solidarity taxes—which can also help mobilize much-needed revenues in the wake of a crisis. This paper argues that a plausible conceptual case can be made to tax the value generated by users under the corporate income tax. However, a number of issues need to be tackled for user-based tax measures to become a reality, which include agreement among countries on whether user value justifies a reallocation of taxing rights, establishing the legal right to tax income derived from user value, as well as an appropriate metric for valuing user-generated data if it is ever to be used as a tax base. Furthermore, attempting to tax only certain types of business is ill-advised, especially as user data is now being exploited widely enough for it to be recognized as an input for almost all businesses. Several options present themselves for consideration—from a modified permanent establishment definition combined with taxation by formulary apportionment, to user-based royalty-type taxes—each with their own merits and misdemeanors.

Digital technology allows businesses to operate in a country without a physical presence, which poses challenges for traditional taxation. The digital debate focuses on direct taxation and the creation of new taxing rights arising from the tax claims of market jurisdictions on income obtained by foreign digital suppliers conducting business therein without any physical presence. Tax Theory Applied to the Digital Economy analyzes the tax-disruptive aspects of digital business models and reviews current tax initiatives in light of traditional tax theory principles. The analysis concludes that market countries’ tax claims are unsubstantiated and contravene the most basic foundations of tax theory, giving rise to a series of legal, economic, tax policy, and tax administration issues that policy makers cannot overlook. The authors propose establishing a digital data tax (DDT) that is a license-type consumption tax, rather than an income tax, on the international supply of Internet bandwidth to access digital markets. The DDT can be applied either globally or unilaterally, and could become a significant source of tax revenues for market jurisdictions. It is aligned with tax principles and it does not conflict with other tax initiatives: the DDT taxes foreign digital companies as consumers, while income tax proposals tax them as suppliers. The authors also propose creating a new global internet tax agency (GITA) under the auspices of the United Nations that would provide a neutral forum for political discussion and technical assistance in the area of digital taxation. The digital economy is a global phenomenon that requires a global solution: the creation of global taxing mechanisms and global institutions that provide technical assistance and support for successful global implementation. The book explains difficult technical concepts in plain language and contributes to the digital tax debate in a way that can be understood by anyone. Such understanding is essential to obtaining global support, achieving tax compliance, and fostering multilateral tax cooperation.

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.