21st Century Impact of E-Commerce in International Taxation from the Developing Countries' Perspective

• In Event: Coordination in International Tax

Abstract

This paper studies the issues and challenges arising from e-commerce taxation from the developing countries’ perspective. First, this paper identifies four challenges which haunted the tax authorities, that is, main concern faced for the design of e-commerce tax policy to achieve the better distributive outcome in the 21st century. The key intuition is to understand tax challenges in order to design tax policy suited for developing countries and while complying with international taxation standards. Second, this paper argues that developed countries still using the “enhanced” traditional taxation mechanism such as VAT and GST to response such challenges. The debate as to the best mechanism to address e-commerce tax challenges is ongoing and this article suggests that the developing countries should first understand the core concept of technology application in the nexus of e-commerce, particularly developing countries as an adopter to the technology application before considering their owns taxation mechanism or approach to address the rapid growth of e-commerce.

Author

• Lai Keong Hal, 22059237@siswa.um.edu.my / kevin.hal_9@yahoo.com.my