Taxation of international digital transactions has been a perplexing issue. As per the international tax rules, where an enterprise is a resident in one state with income originating in another state (source country), international tax rules provide that the source country will have the taxing rights over such income only if it is established that the enterprise has a permanent establishment (PE) in the source country. Thus, for the source country to be able to tax profits arising from the digital economy, some physical presence of the non-resident enterprise is required in the source state.

However, today a non-resident can carry out a large amount of internet transactions in the source state without having any significant physical presence there. A website can be launched from anywhere and made available to users anywhere in the world. There is no central point, or physical location, for such a transaction and thus, it may not fall within any country’s jurisdiction for taxation purposes.

This opens up two possibilities: double taxation or non-taxation. The concerned people could be even further creative, and actually set up an online business at a place where none of the founders / promoters are present, thereby making it even more difficult to tax them.Continue Reading Taxing the Digital Economy: The Rule of ‘Significant Economic Presence’