Taxation, Data and Destination - An Analysis of the Compatibility of a Digitalized Destination-Based Corporate Tax and a Destination-Based Cash-Flow Tax with International and EU Tax and Data Protection Law Frameworks

Doctoral thesis (2020)

The digitalized economy poses challenges and issues to traditional corporate taxation that require modifications in the way companies are taxed under international tax law. The thesis discusses two tax ... [more ▼]

The digitalized economy poses challenges and issues to traditional corporate taxation that require modifications in the way companies are taxed under international tax law. The thesis discusses two tax proposals to face some of the main issues, such as the intangibility of business assets and operations, the lack of physical presence of businesses in market jurisdictions, as well as non-taxation under both corporate income tax and value added tax in these jurisdictions. One of the tax proposals is the destination-based cash-flow tax that has been elaborated on mainly in economic literature. The other proposal has been drafted by the author and is named "digitalized destination-based corporate tax". The thesis analyzes the business and legal context in which the two taxes would operate: beyond the testing of the two model taxes against several digitalized business models, the relevant legal frameworks known in taxation and composed by double taxation conventions, EU law and WTO law are analyzed. Moreover, considering that the place of destination is determined by reference to the place of customers or users, corporate taxpayers likely need to collect and process (personal) data of these third parties in order to determine their place of tax liability. Thus, the thesis also examines potential data protection law interferences. [less ▲]