Post by account_disabled on Mar 11, 2024 0:55:20 GMT -5
“ Apple equals Greece's GDP and Google triples profits”, “The increase in online advertising boosts Facebook's profits”, “The pandemic boosts technology companies to record quarterly results”… These headlines reflect the transformation at all levels that has brought COVID and whose main tool has been digitalization. Although this growth has increased since March of last year, these companies have recently been among the companies with the highest profits in the world ; and at the same time, the last in the ranking of tax payments. It is difficult to do the math but, in any case, given the use of “convenience” countries through which they end up transferring their profits to territories with little or no taxation - what we know as tax havens , which perhaps would be better called “ tax hideouts” -, we can conclude that their contribution to the different treasuries of the countries in which they obtain their income is more than meager.
This is why the recent Tax Law on Certain Digital Services has become so necessary , which was born with a vocation for temporality while an international decision is adopted that is then transferred to our legislation. This is a new standard, as indicated in its extensive Explanatory Memorandum, which covers the gaps left by current tax legislation, which “were not designed to deal with business models based mainly on intangible assets, data and knowledge.” And consequently three types of digital services are taxed, characterized by the fact Belgium Mobile Number List that they could not exist without the involvement of users: online advertising, online intermediation and data transmission services. Despite the slowdown in the adoption of global measures, in recent months and, above all, in recent weeks, a chain of reactions by the IMF, the OECD and the new US administration seems to indicate that something is happening. moving and that some decision could be adopted in the short term regarding the multilateral negotiation of international tax rules.
The first pillar would establish new rules for where taxes should be paid and an entirely new way of sharing tax powers between countries. The objective would be to ensure that multinational companies with a strong digital component or consumer-oriented pay taxes in the place where they operate in a sustained and meaningful way, even if they do not have a physical presence, as is required today. The second pillar would establish a global minimum tax that would help countries around the world solve the rest of the problems related to base erosion and profit shifting by multinational companies. If we add to this panorama the fact that, in many cases, the agreements signed to avoid double taxation have finally resulted, in the words of the Secretary General of the OECD himself, Ángel Gurría, in “double exemption agreements”, we arrive at the current situation of erosion of tax bases and transfer of profits to territories with little or no taxation, of large transnational corporations , with an increased effect in the case of those in the digital sector.
This is why the recent Tax Law on Certain Digital Services has become so necessary , which was born with a vocation for temporality while an international decision is adopted that is then transferred to our legislation. This is a new standard, as indicated in its extensive Explanatory Memorandum, which covers the gaps left by current tax legislation, which “were not designed to deal with business models based mainly on intangible assets, data and knowledge.” And consequently three types of digital services are taxed, characterized by the fact Belgium Mobile Number List that they could not exist without the involvement of users: online advertising, online intermediation and data transmission services. Despite the slowdown in the adoption of global measures, in recent months and, above all, in recent weeks, a chain of reactions by the IMF, the OECD and the new US administration seems to indicate that something is happening. moving and that some decision could be adopted in the short term regarding the multilateral negotiation of international tax rules.
The first pillar would establish new rules for where taxes should be paid and an entirely new way of sharing tax powers between countries. The objective would be to ensure that multinational companies with a strong digital component or consumer-oriented pay taxes in the place where they operate in a sustained and meaningful way, even if they do not have a physical presence, as is required today. The second pillar would establish a global minimum tax that would help countries around the world solve the rest of the problems related to base erosion and profit shifting by multinational companies. If we add to this panorama the fact that, in many cases, the agreements signed to avoid double taxation have finally resulted, in the words of the Secretary General of the OECD himself, Ángel Gurría, in “double exemption agreements”, we arrive at the current situation of erosion of tax bases and transfer of profits to territories with little or no taxation, of large transnational corporations , with an increased effect in the case of those in the digital sector.