Digital Services Taxes All Over the World

The research project intends to carry out an in-depth study on the dissemination of unilateral Digital Services Taxes all over the world.​

Digital services taxes are emerging as a solution to a significant challenge posed to states in taxing digital giants. This problem is largely due to the fact that even though data has become the most valuable asset and data mining has become the most profitable business model in the digitalized economy, digital giants can carry out their business in a jurisdiction (called market jurisdiction) without having the physical presence.​ As multilateral solutions, promoted for example by the OECD, are failing, unilateral solutions for the taxation of digital services - national DST - have proliferated throughout the world.​

This research project aims to carry out a study on the characteristics, foundations and need for DSTs with a view to understanding the need for them and whether they are the most efficient mechanisms for achieving economic objectives, such as correcting market failures and defense of competition. The aim is to explore the regulatory role of digital taxes, as mechanisms for State intervention in markets to provide greater efficiency, rebalancing the power between market agents.

The project focuses on the economic and social impacts caused by the massive use of data and its mining - creation of rules and patterns of consumption behavior - suggesting the creation of a tax instrument as a regulatory mechanism.​ The creation of tax mechanisms like that can be included in a broader package of measures, contributes to correcting market distortions caused by the use and access to new technological instruments, the emptying of dominant positions such as large technological companies , as well as guaranteeing an essential source of revenue for the digital transition of public administrations.​ Being a tax mechanism, the creation and supervision would be scrutinized by democratic institutions, creating greater transparency regarding the use and purpose of the revenue generated, and could also contribute to a redistribution of costs associated with the digital economy.​

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To create this regulatory tax mechanism, there must be an appropriate methodology that involves collecting information on taxes on the digital economy that already exist, systematizing and analyzing the data, cataloging the taxes.​

Data collection will lead to questions regarding three essential aspects:

1. What is a regulatory tax?
2. Is the tax mechanism for regulatory purposes efficient?
3. What results to be expected?​

A research project of this magnitude necessarily requires the involvement of international data analysis, especially given the examples from the European Union and OECD. ​

But above all, it requires a multidisciplinary approach, with the involvement of areas and expertise such as:

• Economic Analysis of Law
• Behavioral Economics
• Analysis of statistical data
• Regulation and Competition
• Tax Law
• Fundamental Rights

The Team is multidisciplinary and has experience in different jurisdictions, with a view to combining different experiences, namely the Indian, American and European panorama.​

Information has already been collected and compared from 6 different countries. The collection and processing of information has already allowed the first public presentation of the project at the GREIT Summer Course, where it received very positive reviews.​

The aim is to prepare a scientific article on the taxation of digital services throughout the world, especially given the proliferation of these taxes in a unilateral regime format.​

This article must be peer reviewed and we intend to publish it in two international journals, preferably American and European.

Research Team

Prof. Dr. Ana Paula Dourado (CIDEEFF)

Dr. Nilay Dayanç Kuzeyli (NYU)

Dr. Paula Braz Machado (CIDEEFF)

Sohum Dua (Master, NYU)

Duration

2024-2026

Project ongoing