Taxation In A Global 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.

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.

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).

This book presents an analysis of the challenges the spread of the digital economy poses for international taxation.

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.

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.

Time to discuss anti-BEPS measures around digitalization In the course of the BEPS Report on Action 1, it was concluded that there was no instantaneous need for specific rules to address base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) made possible by the digitalization of enterprises and new digital businesses. At the same time, it was acknowledged that general measures may not suffice with the assessment of results to begin in 2020. While awaiting possible fundamental reforms of the tax framework, it is time to discuss anti-BEPS measures bearing in mind the peculiar features of the digital economy such as increased mobility, no need for physical presence, and dematerialization. The Book focuses on five key areas of interest:International Tax PolicyTax Treaty LawTransfer PricingIndirect Taxation IssuesEU Law “Taxation in a Global Digital Economy” analyses the issues and addresses the five key areas of interest from various viewpoints.

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.

Deconstruct to reconstruct seeks to use a modern benefit principle theory that will allow tax authorities to tax companies in the digital economy, assuring they pay taxes in the countries in which they operate. The emergence of a new business models such as app stores, online advertising, cloud computing, participative network platforms, high-speed trading, and online payment services has reshaped the global economy and made it difficult for tax authorities to determine what and where to tax. Technologies in the new digital economy make it possible for companies to operate in countries without being physically present. While companies such as Netflix, Google, and AirBnB provide services and earn profits in different countries, tax loopholes and intricate tax planning enable them to pay little-to-no taxes in many of these countries. For example, Netflix earned more than US$100 billion in Colombia in 2016, but it did not pay any direct or indirect taxes in the country. The absence of a specific tax or legal rule that targets digital companies has prevented Colombian tax authorities from taxing Netflix or any other company of the sort. Many tax authorities around the world have similar experiences.

The international tax system is in dire need of reform. It allows multinational companies to shift profits to low tax jurisdictions and thus reduce their global effective tax rates. A major international project, launched in 2013, aimed to fix the system, but failed to seriously analyse the fundamental aims and rationales for the taxation of multinationals' profit, and in particular where profit should be taxed. As this project nears its completion, it is becomingincreasingly clear that the fundamental structural weaknesses in the system will remain. This book, produced by a group of economists and lawyers, adopts a different approach and starts from first principles in order to generate an international tax system fit for the 21st century. This approach examines fundamental issues of principle and practice in the taxation of business profit and the allocation of taxing rights over such profit amongst countries, paying attention to the interests and circumstances of advanced and developing countries. Once this conceptual framework is developed, the book evaluates the existing system and potential reform options against it. A number of reform options are considered, ranging from those requiring marginal change to radically different systems. Some options have been discussed widely. Others, particularly Residual Profit Split systems and a Destination Based Cash-Flow Tax, are more innovative and have been developed at some length and in depth for the first time in this book. Their common feature is that they assign taxing rights partly/fully to the location of relatively immobile factors: shareholders or consumers.