With the development of e-commerce, there are no longer any geographical boundaries for commodity transactions, but taxes must still be levied by specific national entities. How to levy taxes on online transactions has become an urgent issue that countries need to solve. Due to the large gap between developed and developing countries in communication network technology and economic development levels, this gap will cause a large difference in the interests of network taxation. It is this difference in interests that makes countries adopt different tax policies on whether to levy taxes on e-commerce and how to levy taxes. The United States mainly advocates a zero tariff policy, while the European Union adopts a limited tariff policy. Since most developing countries currently adopt traditional business forms and take a wait-and-see attitude towards e-commerce, which represents the latest technology, most developing countries do not have their own policies in the face of the challenges of e-commerce to tax issues.
The tariff policy framework of major domestic and foreign countries and organizations, these tariff policies constitute the tariff policy framework of e-commerce as a whole, and are constantly being improved and supplemented over time.
(I) The attitudes of countries and international organizations around the world towards e-commerce tax policies
1. The United States is the birthplace of e-commerce. E-commerce has the widest application and the highest penetration rate. The government has actively supported enterprises engaged in e-commerce from the beginning and formulated clear tax incentives. Since 1996, the United States has been gradually promoting the zero tax rate for domestic transactions and zero tariff for international transactions for online trade. In November 1996, the U.S. Treasury Department issued the “Selective Tax Policy for Global Electronic Commerce”. In addition to the principle of tax neutrality and the view of coordinating with international tax principles as much as possible, it also clearly proposed not to impose any new taxes on online transactions and to strengthen the tax jurisdiction of residents. In 1998, the U.S. Congress passed the “Internet Tax Exemption Act”, which implemented a three-year policy of deferring the collection of Internet taxes. In May 2000, the U.S. House of Representatives passed another bill to extend the ban on the collection of Internet taxes from 2001 to 2006.
2. The European Union issued the “Report on Protecting Value-Added Tax Revenue and Promoting the Development of Electronic Commerce” in June 1998, arguing that the collection of value-added tax and the development of electronic commerce should not be opposed. At present, most EU member states have implemented a limited tariff system. The European Commission believes that in order to maintain tax neutrality, new taxes can be levied, but the existing tax burden cannot be exempted for electronic commerce, otherwise it will lead to unfair competition. Therefore, it is planned to levy value-added tax on European consumers engaged in electronic commerce activities on the Internet.
(II) my country’s attitude towards e-commerce tax policy
my country is a developing country. Due to the inadequacy of hardware, software environment and information infrastructure, there is still a big gap between e-commerce and developed countries. On the one hand, network technology has a very large role in driving the economy. On the other hand, the proportion of e-commerce transactions in my country is very low and the absolute amount is very small. Therefore, my country has given a tax preference policy and stipulated that the Internet will not be taxed temporarily. Of course, temporarily not levying taxes or preferential taxation does not mean giving up the sovereignty of taxation. In order to protect the authority and fairness of the tax system, my country will not intend to permanently exempt e-commerce from taxes like some developed countries, because the electronic form of e-commerce has not changed its trade characteristics. Once the conditions are ripe, such as the confirmation of taxpayer identity, the confirmation of income source, the division of income, electronic cash payment and other technical issues are resolved, e-commerce taxation will surely become a new hot spot for my country’s taxation.