Consumption Tax Options for California

Reviews concerns about the state's current tax system and evaluates potential consumption-based tax reforms, including retail sales tax reform, corporate income tax reform, gross receipts tax, value added tax, and sales-apportioned tax on value added

Globalization, Tax Erosion and the Internet

Electronic commerce and globalization are, and will continue to be a challenge to tax collectors throughout the world. Globalization makes the cross-border movements in goods, capital and labour less transparent. Companies and individuals are therefore able to exploit tax differences between countries. The Internet eliminates borders between countries and furthermore makes businesses virtually invisible. At the consumer end, E-commerce makes the tracing of transactions and thus the taxing of goods and services sold and distributed via the Internet almost impossible. As a result, state and national governments’ tax bases are, or are at risk of, being eroded.public economics ;

Cybertax

Internet, the fastest growing communications medium or consumer electronic technology, doubles its size every six months. Within a few years the number of citizens in Cyberspace will outnumber all but the largest nations. The borderless world of the Internet extends its reach to all corners of the world. Best of all, it is almost free. Hardware costs aside, once on the Internet a user can surf anywhere for the price of a local phone call. But what about all the foregone tax revenue that electronic commerce could facilitate? Although Internet commerce is in its earliest stages, its rapid growth is anticipated. Some estimate that in thirty years time, consumer activity online could represent more than thirty percent of total consumer activity. This leads to the erosion of national tax bases. In this paper we show that as a measure of last resort the bit tax can be implemented. Although the exact implementation of such a tax is not yet clear, the general idea of a tax on information from the point of view of an eroding tax base and the changing society is certainly worth considering. Furthermore, the tax revenues could be directed towards improving access to the Internet, educating individuals to become acquainted with the Internet and providing additional needed bandwidth.economics of technology ;

Cybertax

Abstract not availableeconomics of technology ;

Criteria For Expanding The Sales Tax Base: Services and Exemptions

This brief focuses on issues associated with the sales tax base and discusses the criteria and factors that should be considered in deciding which services to add to the sales tax base and which sales tax exemptions to eliminate or add

Revenue Estimates for Eliminating Sales Tax Exemptions and Adding Services to the Sales Tax Base

This report provides revenue estimates for alternative combinations of eliminating sales tax exemptions and adding services to the sales tax base. FRC Report 17

Leviathan in cyberspace : how to tax e-commerce

Because of the upswing in electronic commerce via the Internet, governments in the European Union and the United States have been discussing the shaping of an effective system of turnover taxation in cyberspace since the late 1990s, but have failed to agree on a definite tax system. An analysis of the various possible approaches to turnover taxation in cyberspace shows that the main challenge of the new economy is to effectively cope with business-to-consumer (B2C) transborder trade in digital on-line goods and services. However, the traditional systems of turnover taxation that are based on the country-of-destination principle such as the transitional system of the European Union, the sales tax system, the community principle, and the VIVAT and CVAT approaches give rise to several surveillance, efficiency, incentive, and identification problems in taxing B2C e-commerce. This is also the case with the more innovative proposals that have been made with regard to the taxation of B2C transborder trade in digital on-line goods, such as the German payment flow proposal, the U.S. e-card proposal, the modified country-of-origin proposal of the EU Commission, or the bit tax proposal. As a consequence, there are only two appropriate approaches to deal with the special characteristics of transborder trade in cyberspace: the country-of-origin principle combined with a taxation of digital goods and services at the physical location of producers, and the community principle in combination with a withholding tax (WITHVAT). Under the country-of-origin principle, exports are taxed at the rate of the country of origin and imports are free of tax. The taxation of goods turnovers at the physical location of the firms involved could at least partly prevent the transfer of Internet firms to low-tax countries. The main advantage of the country-of-origin principle is that it does not require any transborder tax adjustment and that it is also a suitable and effective approach for the turnover taxation of traditional off-line and on-line goods. However, the country-of-origin principle requires an administratively burdensome central clearinghouse system in order to guarantee the regional fiscal assignment according to the countryof- destination principle as demanded by the governments of the EU member states. Under the WITHVAT system, exports of digital on-line goods are taxed at the rate of the country of destination and consumers are responsible for passing the tax funds on to their national tax authorities. In order to set incentives for consumers to correctly report their digital on-line purchases to national tax authorities, all suppliers of digital online goods would be forced to add a withholding tax that equals the highest VAT rate of all countries participating in the transborder VAT system to any sales to consumers. Consumers would get a refund according to the difference between the withholding tax and the tax rate of the country of destination if they presented the bills to their national tax authorities. The main advantage of the WITHVAT approach is that it does not need a central clearinghouse mechanism, because decentralized clearing is endogenous in the system. However, the WITHVAT approach may give rise to an unspecifiable obstacle to e-commerce and is not a suitable approach for the taxation of traditional off-line and on-line goods. --