Corporate taxation after digitalization: breaking the mirror and picking up the - right - pieces

Summary

This project aims to investigate why the current income taxation cannot work in the digital economy and to propose some alternatives.

Researchers

Professor Edoardo Traversa (UCLouvain)
Dr Francesco Cannas (Monash University Malaysia)

Project background and aims

The development of economic activities, and the corresponding attribution of income and wealth to economic actors, has undergone various processes of de-territorialisation and de-materialization, that have accelerated with the digitalization. Recent international (OECD and UE) and to a lesser extent domestic reforms have tried to adapt the structure of corporate taxation to those changes. However, corporate taxes continue to be build on traditional concepts such as legal personality, residence and income, which due to structural weaknesses, may appear unfit to adequately determine what types of contributions may be required from corporate actors. Therefore, while acknowledging the merits of recent international (OECD) initiatives, it is worth exploring alternatives, such as more targeted taxes, based on transactions and value, as well as a renewed conception of “contribution” by corporate actors. Three possibilities are analyzed: a residual transaction-based tax, the taxation of corporate value and a re-elaboration of the notion of corporate contribution inspired by the concept of corporate social responsibility for tax purposes

Methodology

This research is based on the traditional legal desktop research (which includes the analysis of case-law, statutes and scholarly contributions).

Output