Friday, February 22, 2019

Tax Wars: The Battle over Taxing Global Digital Commerce

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian slammed over 'Trump-like response' to Newcastle journalist - ABC News

You can smell the desperation: it's the pork in NSW's election barrel

‘Full of Liberal mates’: Labor accuses Coalition of 'stacking' tribunal - The Guardian

Hackers 'scramble' patient files in Melbourne heart clinic cyber attack - The Guardian

Why international law is failing to keep pace with technology in preventing cyber attacks - The Conversation AU

A big Chinese port bans Australian coal and the dollar falls

Gmail
 The design and operation of the US Low Income Taxpayer Clinics program could be considered as a model for an Australian initiative
 ATO’s ‘annus horribilis’—2017 performance report’—


Chronicle of Higher Education op-ed:  Is Email Making Professors Stupid?, by Cal Newport (Georgetown; author, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World(2016)):

Email used to simplify crucial tasks. Now it’s strangling scholars’ ability to think.


Emoji are showing up in court cases exponentially and courts aren’t prepared – The Verge: “Bay Area prosecutors were trying to prove that a man arrested during a prostitution sting was guilty of pimping charges, and among the evidence was a series of Instagram DMs he’d allegedly sent to a woman. One read: “Teamwork make the dream work” with high heels and money bag emoji placed at the end. 





Recently, the intersection of state aid and international tax has acquired a high profile in the European Union. In response, important tax and accounting policy changes are being proposed or implemented. However, these changes are predicated on rhetoric that unfair tax ruling practices by host country governments are pervasive, and significantly benefit foreign-owned companies. Yet, there is no empirical evidence as to whether this is the case. Using several novel data sources on tax concessions granted in the EU, we find that both domestic- and foreign-owned companies receive economically significant tax benefits from state aid.




Kysar (2018)Rebecca Kysar (Fordham) presented Unravelling the Tax Treaty at Duke as part of its Tax Policy Workshop Series hosted by Lawrence Zelenak:
Coordination among nations over the taxation of international transactions rests on a network of some 2,000 bilateral double tax treaties. The double tax treaty is, in many ways, the roots of the international system of taxation. That system, however, is in upheaval in the face of globalization, technological advances, taxpayer abuse, and shifting political tides. In the academic literature, however, scrutiny of tax treaties is largely confined to the albeit important question of whether tax treaties are beneficial for developing countries. Surprisingly little consideration has been paid to whether developed countries, like the United States, should continue to sign tax treaties with one another, and no formal revenue or economic analyses of the treaties has been undertaken by the United States government. In fact, little evidence or theory exists to support entrance into tax treaties by the United States, and examination of investment flows indicates the treaties likely lose significant U.S. revenues. Additionally, they enable taxpayer abuse, stagnate domestic policy, and thwart reforms of the antiquated international tax system. These consequences are particularly problematic for the United States. Other nations, after all, have been able to supplement their revenues and pursue destination-based taxation through treaty-friendly VATs.
Arthur J. Cockfield (Queen's University), Tax Wars: The Battle over Taxing Global Digital Commerce, 161 Tax Notes 1331 (Dec. 10, 2018):

This Article discusses the emergence of an international tax “war” and provides an overview of global digital taxation reform efforts. Governments have been unable to attain consensus surrounding how to tax cross-border digital transactions. As a result, dozens of governments are now pursuing uncoordinated reforms -- including digital services taxes, economic presence tests, withholding taxes and equalization levies -- that will encourage international double taxation and inhibit cross-border trade and investment. The global digital tax conflict masks a growing dissatisfaction with how to tax value associated with global transactions.

At the end of the game, the king and the pawn go back in the same box.


















The Daily Mail by Brett Lackey For Daily Mail Australia


Tuesday 19th February 2019 at 4.56pm


Foreign investment in Australian residential real estate plunged by 83 per cent in less than


two years to the 2017/2018 financial year.









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