"

Sales Tax & Compliance brought to you by >> Avalara Logo new12

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 9 seconds

What You Need to Know About the Digital Services Tax – Before Your Clients Ask

New ways of doing business often challenge tax rules written for a different model. That is a concern expressed for many years by several countries. The concern is that it looks like companies that make money by other than selling tangible goods are profiting by activity in the country, but have no permanent establishment in the country, so owe no income tax. For example, a search engine company makes money when someone uses its search engine because it provides data to the company. And if the user clicks on an ad, the search engine company makes money. But no tax revenues go to the user's country.
 
 
The OECD, European Commission and others have been studying this for many years. The AICPA recently released a policy paper that explains the topic, issues and lists what some countries are doing or proposing. See AICPA Policy Report – Taxation of the digitized economy: A policy paper designed to educate, enlighten and stimulate discussion (October 2018).
 
The UK has also studied this issue and solicited comments on its suggestions. It now proposes to start a Digital Services Tax (DST) in 2020. In November 2017, the UK government released a discussion paper – Corporate tax and the digital economy: position paper; later updated in 2018. The position is that “a multinational group’s profits should be taxed in the countries in which it generates value.”  Also see the UK policy paper – Digital Services Tax: Budget 2018 brief. It states:
 
“The DST applies a 2% tax on the revenues of specific digital business models where their revenues are linked the participation of UK users. The tax will apply to: search engines; social media platforms; and online marketplaces. That is because the government  considers  these business models derive significant value from the participation of their users.”
 
The UK DST will only apply to businesses with at least £500 of global revenues ($650 million USD).
Congressman Brady, Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, stated his opposition to the UK DST – On 10/31/18, he released the following statement:
 
“The United Kingdom’s introduction of a new tax targeting cross-border digital services – which mirrors a similar proposal under consideration in the European Union – is troubling.  Singling out a key global industry dominated by American companies for taxation that is inconsistent with international norms is a blatant revenue grab.
 
“The ongoing global dialogue on the digital economy through the OECD framework should not be pre-empted by unilateral actions that will result in double taxation. If the United Kingdom or other countries proceed, that will prompt a review of our U.S. tax and regulatory approach to determine what actions are appropriate to ensure a level playing field in global markets.”
 
Spain has also proposed a DST of 3%.  See DLA Piper Global Tax Alert 11/1/18.
 
Is a new tax the answer? Can existing income taxes be modified to address where income is generated? How easy it is to know where income is generated?
 
I think technology makes it possible to know the location of the person clicking on a social media ad. The harder question might be where is that income generated for tax policy purposes. That has been a longstanding multistate question - where the costs of performance occur or at the destination, or perhaps some combination?
Annette Nellen

Professor Annette Nellen is a tax professor and Director of the MS Taxation Program at San Jose State University, teaching courses on tax research, tax accounting methods, taxation of property transactions, state taxation, ethics, and tax policy. She currently serves as chair of the AICPA Tax Executive Committee, and is a past chair of the AICPA Individual Taxation Technical Resource Panel and a past vice chair of the Executive Committee of the California Bar Tax Section. 


Read 10933 times
Rate this item
(0 votes)

Latest from Annette Nellen

Sales Tax Assessment Tool

The Accounting Top 100

Sales Tax Calculator

Social Leader board

The Accounting Top 100 social media leaderboard ranks accounting professionals based on their overall presence, influence, and engagement on social media platforms. Each user’s rank is determined by that user’s Klout Score in addition to a list of custom metrics, and all updated rankings are displayed in new leaderboards generated every two weeks.

Did you make the list?

Congratulations! You can now track your progress on the leaderboard by clicking “Follow us” at the top of the list. Want to get the word out about your new celebrity status? Share this page with all of your friends and followers so they can view and join in on this fun social activity.

Think you’ve got what it takes to make the Top 100?

Join for free today!

Disclaimer

Avalara’s Accounting Top 100 leaderboard (the “Leaderboard”) is assembled using a list of accounting professional users that’s curated by manual entry as well as by Rise.Global's internal Twitter search functionality. We reserve the right to change scoring metrics used for ranking and to exclude anyone from the list, in our sole discretion. The Leaderboard is not an endorsement, recommendation or sponsorship of any of the accounting professionals on the Leaderboard, and we do not make any representation or guarantee of their ability or reliability. Assessments by different methods or based on different information may yield different results. The Leaderboard is only a starting point to gather information about accounting professionals, and you should not rely on it to decide whether to hire an accounting professional.

For feedback and/or questions please contact [email protected].

Visit other PMG Sites:

Template Settings

Color

For each color, the params below will give default values
Tomato Green Blue Cyan Dark_Red Dark_Blue

Body

Background Color
Text Color

Header

Background Color

Footer

Select menu
Google Font
Body Font-size
Body Font-family
Direction
PMG360 is committed to protecting the privacy of the personal data we collect from our subscribers/agents/customers/exhibitors and sponsors. On May 25th, the European's GDPR policy will be enforced. Nothing is changing about your current settings or how your information is processed, however, we have made a few changes. We have updated our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy to make it easier for you to understand what information we collect, how and why we collect it.