Study on the taxation problems and strategies of digital commodities in e-commerce

Abstract

With the electronic commerce growing rapidly, the expansion of digital commodity transaction scale makes the tax solutions of digital commodity more difficult. There is disagreement on the problems of the attribute of taxation object, the tax jurisdiction definition and the mechanism of tax collection and management. Based on the analysis of the international dispute, and combining with the existing problems in the tax treatment of China, the paper suggests that Chinese government should revise digital commodity tax policy, which clarifies whether digital commodities belong to the service or intangible assets; that online sale of cross-border digital commodities should obey the consumer (recipient) location principle and adopt the concept of virtual permanent establishment, implementing reverse taxation mechanism on B2B transactions and the third party tax collection mechanism on B2C transactions; and that the provider self-declaration and paying tax mechanism on the in-border digital commodities transaction should be carried out.