IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ctf/journl/v67y2019i4p1135.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Digital Services Tax on the Verge of Implementation

Author

Listed:
  • Wei Cui

    (Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia)

Abstract

France enacted the digital services tax (DST) in 2019, and similar legislation is pending in the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, and other countries. The DST can be viewed as a tax on location-specific rent (LSR), and it arguably solves genuinely new problems in international taxation. The author briefly reviews this justification of the DST and further examines the DST design in light of three criticisms. The first criticism is that certain features of the DST render it similar to distortionary import tariffs. The second is that the DST would not be borne by digital platforms but would only be shifted to platform users. The third is that governments promoting the DST seem not to characterize it as a tax on LSR but, instead, have advocated reforming the income tax. The author suggests ways of rationalizing the DST's tariff-like features, refutes casual arguments about the DST's incidence, and offers a framework for understanding why small economies might advocate simultaneously for the DST and for the reformation of international income taxation.

Suggested Citation

  • Wei Cui, 2019. "The Digital Services Tax on the Verge of Implementation," Canadian Tax Journal, Canadian Tax Foundation, vol. 67(4), pages 1135-1152.
    • Handle: RePEc:ctf:journl:v:67:y:2019:i:4:p:1135
    DOI: https://doi.org/10.32721/ctj.2019.67.4.sym.cui
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ctf.ca/EN/Publications/CTJ_Contents/2019CTJ4.aspx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/https://doi.org/10.32721/ctj.2019.67.4.sym.cui?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wolfram F. Richter, 2022. "Taxing Multinational Enterprises: A Theory-Based Approach to Reform," CESifo Working Paper Series 10119, CESifo.
    2. Wolfram F. Richter, 2022. "Granting Market Countries the Right to Tax Profit without Physical Nexus," CESifo Working Paper Series 9556, CESifo.
    3. Akira Matsuoka, 2021. "The new international tax regime: analysis from a power-basis perspective," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 1(5), pages 1-23, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ctf:journl:v:67:y:2019:i:4:p:1135. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jim Lyons (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.ctf.ca/EN .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.