International Taxation of Electronic Commerce

The bricks and mortar of commercial law as we know it are crumbling into dust. Electronic commerce - or ""e-commerce"" as it is familiarly called - sweeps away the very foundations of what was not so long ago our most solid, comfortable, and secure legal system. In its most advanced form e-commerce allows unidentified purchasers to pay obscure vendors, in ""electronic cash"", for products that are often goods, services, and licenses all rolled into one. A payee may be no more than a computer that can take up residence anywhere at the drop of a hat; national boundaries are of no consequence whatsoever. Taxation authorities are understandably dismayed. This book is a minutely detailed picture of current reality in the worldwide huddle of revenue regimes as they try to cope with the most daunting challenge they have ever had to face. It analyzes a number of fast-moving trends in the behaviour of national taxation authorities, web-based companies, certain low-tax (or no-tax) jurisdictions, and international organizations that have significant bearing on the future development of the taxation of e-commerce, including the following:;how United States domestic and international tax rules are being interpreted in the effort to accommodate e-commerce; the powerful retailers' lobby against the moratorium on U.S. state and local sales tax on Internet transactions; how VAT rules in EU countries and other jurisdictions are being restructured to accommodate international e-commerce; new theories of income and payment characterization, and in particular the influential OECD ongoing study; the crucial discussion over what constitutes a permanent establishment for tax purposes; the emergence of tax havens especially adapted to e-commerce, with a detailed study of Anguilla; and the danger to e-business of international criminal investigatory powers created as weapons in the drug wars.;Three special chapters - on e-commerce taxation in Canada, Ireland, and The Netherlands - add a comparative dimension to the analysis. Appendices include an IRS audit guide, the relevant OECD Draft Model Tax Treaty, and a selection of pertinent IRS forms. Notable for its clarification of the issues surrounding this new and complex subject - and for its detailed treatment of how these issues are being dealt with at national and international levels - this volume should be of enormous value to businesses in the electronic marketplace, whether they are established there or entering.