国际英语资讯:Spotlight: Experts urge efforts to reach intl agreement on digital tax amid coronavirus cr_时事

国际英语资讯:Spotlight: Experts urge efforts to reach intl agreement on digital tax amid coronavirus cr

LONDON, July 9 -- A quicker solution with international cooperation is needed to address the tax challenges arising from the digitalization of economies amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said after a recent meeting.

The Paris-based body is trying to harmonize tax rules for digital companies with an international efforts, shifting taxation to the place where users of a service are located.

Despite these ongoing multilateral negotiations, several countries have decided to move ahead with unilateral measures to tax the digital economy, which have largely taken the form of digital services taxes (DST).

European OECD countries including France, Italy and Britain have implemented a DST. However, debate about this tax has never stopped.

Take Britain for example, a digital service tax has come into effect on April 1, 2020. It takes a percentage of sales from companies operating search engines, social media websites and online marketplaces with revenues above 500 million pounds (632 million U.S. dollars).

Glyn Fullelove, president of the Chartered Institute of Taxation (CIOT), told Xinhua that questions remain on the tax's scope and impact. "For example, will some online gambling and gaming platforms be in or out of this scope? There is continued uncertainty about this," he said.

Another major concern is about the base of the tax.

"It's hard for the company to make a reasonable assessment of how many UK users and the attributable amounts of revenue to the users, resulting in a lack of certainty either for the tax payer or the tax authority," he added.