Cyber-consumption tax for global electronic commerce

Abstract

The explosive development of the Internet is expected to rapidly increase the growth of electronic commerce by private enterprise. In cyberspace, wherein the Internet exists, a system of taxation on the activities of private enterprise, whose authority traditionally is vested in government, remains an area likened to an empty box. Borders where nations have the exclusive authority are transgressed routinely during the brisk progress of private enterprise activities on the global scale. Nevertheless, there still is no agreement in the domain of international taxation on electronic commerce. As a result, the potential exists for double taxation and tax evasion. This study commences from the fundamental view that in traditional trade and electronic commerce, taxation cannot be differentiated. This study offers a taxation model that prevents tax evasion, while at the same time, guarantees effective tax payment. 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 electronic commerce, but also consistent with the traditional commerce environments. The characteristic of CDS Tax is a kind of sales tax, but directly delivered by the consumer without intervention of supplier in the electronic commerce environment. However, for the traditional commerce, the same tax law can be applied and delivered through the supplier as in effect so far. For the consumer``s direct delivery, the consumer``s bank will perform this job depending upon the cyber-payment 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 with consideration given to its own chara...