A Global Consumption Tax and Electronic Collection Systems: Consumer Delivered Sales Tax

Abstract

This study analyzes the principles of available consumption tax and proposes a new cyber-tax policy named Consumer Delivered Sales Tax (CDS Tax) that can be adopted globally not only for the electronic commerce, but also consistently with the traditional commerce environments. The characteristic of CDS Tax is a kind of sales tax, but directly delivered by the consumer without the intervention of supplier in the electronic commerce environmet. However, for the traditional commerce, the same tax law can be applied and delivered through the supplier as was done so far. For the consumers direct delivery, the consumers bank will perform this job depending upon the cyberpayment methods: electronic fund transfer, credit card, and electronic cash in the smart card. The new cyber-tax system is designed to be collected at the time of payment, and the government to which the bank belongs has the tax jurisdiction as the surrogate location of consumption. We have designed the system for the context of each electronic payment method considering its own characteristics. This CDS Tax system should contribute to the even development of global electronic commerce without losing the consistency with the traditional commerce environment. However, the countries with the value added tax system have to convert their current systems to the sales tax system to conform with CDS Tax system.