OECD Conference in Ottawa On E-commerce
Tax-news.com
07 October 1999
An OECD conference in Ottawa
on e-commerce tried to set up some preliminary guidelines
towards a taxation regime for e-commerce:
- existing principles of taxation
should apply
- no discriminatory taxes on e-commerce
(this position has already been enshrined in the US Internet
Tax Freedom Act)
- governments should adopt consistent
principles of Internet taxation
- consumption taxes on cross-border
trade should apply at the place of consumption (ie different
from VAT on products)
- digitized products are not goods!
(i.e. consumption taxes don't apply; in a VAT jurisdiction,
the reverse-charge mechanism would apply, as for services)
This last point seems to take
on board the reality that people won't self-assess for consumption
taxes on down-loaded products; but they won't self-assess for
VAT either. So the OECD position seems to leave offshore e-commerce
suppliers of down-loadable products in an untaxed position. It
may well stay that way until some Government somewhere, worried
about tax leakage, and pushed by a producer lobby worried about
piracy, decides to do something. But what?
.
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