Sales taxes on the internet: When and how to tax?

Ozlem Uzuner, Lee McKnight

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

As a first attempt to tax electronic commerce, many countries applied the existing tax laws to Internet. However, applying these laws to border-spanning electronic commerce proved very inefficient and inappropriate. While some authorities claim not taxing the Internet is the best solution for encouraging the growth of electronic commerce, we believe that use and sales taxes in general are an important part of a government's revenues and that their ban over the Internet is not feasible. Given the magnitude of potential revenues to be obtained from sales over the Internet, we need to consider when and how governments should tax electronic commerce. We focus on some proposals which try to answer this question and argue that a taxation scheme based on the location of the consumer is the best starting point for a global solution.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number223
Pages (from-to)122
Number of pages1
JournalProceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
DOIs
StatePublished - 2001
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Electronic commerce
  • Internet governance
  • Internet taxation
  • Tax-ban

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Computer Science

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