European Value-Added Tax in the Digital Era

Type Book

Author(s)

Marie Lamensch

Series

IBFD Doctoral Series

Date of publication

January 2017

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A Critical Analysis and Proposals for Reform

European Value Added Tax in the Digital Era

This book assesses the current EU VAT provisions on electronically supplied services, and makes innovative and practical proposals for ways to address the identified flaws.

Winner of the 2015 Maurice Lauré Prize awarded by the International Fiscal Association (IFA).

Why this book?

The Internet allows for instantaneous delivery of online supplies to consumers all over the world at any time of day or night. While the resulting “digital economy” offers great opportunities to suppliers and consumers, it also raises unprecedented challenges in the collection of value added taxes, particularly because of the intangible nature of online supplies, the relative anonymity of Internet users and the borderless nature of the e-marketplace.

This book assesses the practical feasibility of existing EU VAT provisions on “electronically supplied services” and tests their compliance with the widely acknowledged OECD "Ottawa Taxation Framework" and the constitutional principle of non-discrimination as embedded in international and European economic law. It reveals major flaws in EU VAT legislation and the underlying OECD benchmark, given that both assume that online suppliers are able to carry out transaction-based verifications of the status and location of their customers in the same way as traditional suppliers.

After discussing possible sources of inspiration for reforming the EU VAT treatment of online supplies (including the OECD “International VAT/GST Guidelines”, the 2014 BEPS report on the “Challenges of the Digital Economy” and the recent European Commission Communication on a Digital Single Market Strategy for Europe), innovative and practical proposals are made on possible technology-based mechanisms that could be used in the future for the correct assessment and collection of value added tax on online supplies.

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Sample excerpt, including table of contents

This book is part of the IBFD Doctoral Series

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Author(s)

Marie Lamensch (PhD Law, LLM Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB); Master Law Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)) teaches VAT law at the Catholic University of Louvain and International and European Taxation at the VUB Institute for European Studies, where she also works as a Senior Researcher. She participates in the OECD WP9 Technical Advisory Group on consumption taxes and guest lectures at IBFD’s International Tax Training department. She previously acted as a researcher for the G20 task force on the Financial Transactions Tax, practised as a lawyer in Brussels and Luxembourg, and worked as a teaching assistant at the ULB.