Taxation

The taxpayer is the user or consumer of the digital service. However, if an Argentine resident intermediary mediates in the payment, it must act as withholding agent. If more than one intermediary are involved, the one with the closest business relationship with the digital service provider must act as the withholding agent. If no Argentine payment intermediary is involved, then the recipient of the services must report and pay the VAT through an electronic bank transfer to the Argentine Tax Administration.

As long as national tax systems develop in response to unique social and administrative pressures, jurisdictions will continue to rely on tax systems that exhibit at least as many differences as similarities. Tax harmonization represents the traditional answer to that entropic pressure, reflecting a confidence that nations can avoid international tax conflicts by becoming more like one another. Unfortunately, in part because many of the jurisdictions that populate today's international tax landscape have little in common, it seems that harmonization is no longer equal to the task. This Part introduces the concept of deharmonization, an alternative to harmonization that may be more robust.

The main finding of this contribution is that most universities offer enough courses on international aspects of law but do not ensure all their students get the minimum necessary, i.e., a sound introduction to the principles of public and private international law as well as ideally the skills to compare legal solutions in various jurisdictions (comparative law).

This symposium organized by the AfronomicsLaw with the assistance of Monica Victor focuses on the synergies between taxation and the digital economy in Latin America and the Caribbean.

For decades, humans have been drawn to space exploration for scientific, security and commercial purposes. Private companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin have undertaken daring projects to commercialize outer space, including tourism, mining space resources and establishing installations and even extra-terrestrial habitats. The allocation of the benefits from outer space is a highly disputed issue, from the early days of space exploration to date. We believe that the issue of taxation, hardly discussed so far, is vital when considering the proper distribution of space benefits

African countries would also need to ensure that the nexus-revenue threshold is as low as possible, in order to accommodate jurisdictions with a relatively small market. Other important issues that are still outstanding include i) the definition between routine and residual profits, ii) the required threshold for determining the portion of residual profits allocable, and iii) how the profits would be allocated to market jurisdictions

The quality of public service delivery has been shown to affect tax non-compliance in an important way. Among other issues that have been attributed to low tax revenues in Nigeria, the State of the fiscal social contract can be said to be the single most important underlying cause. While there remains a depth of systemic issues to be resolved in order to rebuild the broken links in the fiscal social contract properly, the predicted post-pandemic impact on digital communication and business provides Nigeria with the opportunity to leverage on digital growth and engagement to bargain a stronger social contract, particularly with its largest demographic.

The effect of COVID-19 on the developing countries and the imposition of tax on the digital economy within the context of the OECD/G-20's Negotiations on enacting appropriate global standards would include new dynamics of participation, new revenue needs, and new policy dilemmas—involving developing countries. There is the need to fully digitalize the tax filling system in Nigeria and completely jettison the mundane practice of manual tax fillings at the office of the tax authority.

For the fiscal contract to be effective post-COVID-19, all parties to the contract must actively seek to engage on fairer terms. The terms must be implemented, in good faith and, with consideration to the economic and social realities created by the pandemic. A one-sided execution of the contract either by the government or the taxpayer would not cut it. After all, it takes two to tangle, and you can’t clap with one hand.

In the tax world, this is significant because businesses react to tax policy. Tax policy, in turn, stimulates the interest of both local and international investors who are the key drivers of economic growth. Therefore, the challenges of the economic downturn will be more glaring and significant for African countries, who have a greater reliance on tax revenue from large taxpayers than more advanced economies.