1. Similarities
The legislative backgrounds and purposes of countries around the world are not exactly the same, but they have similarities in their main guiding ideologies. First of all, the purpose is to develop a healthy cross-border e-commerce market, with the focus on the legal field, and reasonable laws and regulations should be formulated to provide normative guidance. The commonality of domestic and foreign legislation is that they all recognize that the nature of market entities is profit-seeking. In the absence of mandatory legal requirements, they generally compete for rights and ignore obligations. Therefore, the focus of legal provisions is on the provisions and attribution of obligations. The effectiveness of legal supervision should be maximized, while the impact on market operations should be minimized. The method is to implement specific rights, responsibilities and obligations to specific individuals, requiring market entities to abide by the most basic behavioral norms, and at the same time avoid rigid regulations in laws and regulations in other aspects, leaving it to the market itself and the transaction entities themselves to practice and explore.
Cross-border e-commerce legislation must also follow general business principles: the principles of fairness, equality, openness and security.
Second, the differences
Developed countries, especially Europe and the United States, have more detailed legal provisions for trading entities, and even involve trading entities that have never appeared in Chinese laws, such as intermediary service providers, telecom operators and advertisers, which reflects from the side that the development of cross-border e-commerce in developed countries is more in-depth and comprehensive than that of developing countries in the later period.
Although my country’s cross-border e-commerce is considerable in scale, it has just started in terms of time, and the form is still immature. The professional division of labor among trading entities has just shown a trend, but it is far from mature. An important manifestation in this regard is that many trading entities have multiple responsibilities. For example, trading platforms sometimes specialize in intermediary business and sometimes operate self-operated business, which creates ambiguity in role positioning and functional distinction. Because the distinction between them is not obvious, it is difficult to classify legislation for specific groups when legislating. All trading entities can only be treated equally and consistent behavioral norms are issued to meet the regulatory requirements in the primary stage.
In terms of tariff policies, foreign countries are roughly divided into two types: countries advocating zero tariff policies, led by the United States, and countries advocating limited tariff policies, led by the European Union.
Developed countries such as the United States, Japan, and Australia, due to their status as major exporting countries and electronic information industry powers in international trade, actively promote the global trade liberalization of e-commerce and adhere to the zero tariff policy for cross-border e-commerce. The most representative of them is undoubtedly the United States. The United States is the country with the most extensive, popular and developed e-commerce applications, and the choice of tariff policy is also a product of its national conditions. As a major exporter of goods, the existence of tariff barriers in importing countries is undoubtedly unfavorable to the export trade of the United States, so the United States has been actively advocating trade liberalization and zero tariff policies worldwide.
The number of EU member states is large, and the economic development levels of the member states show great differences. There are both economic powers and foreign trade powers such as Germany and France, and countries with relatively backward economic development such as Estonia and Latvia. Unlike the United States, which has always adhered to the position of zero tariffs on e-commerce, the EU’s attitude towards the tariff issue of cross-border e-commerce shows a certain degree of variability and development.
For developing countries, the economic base determines the superstructure, and the tariff system also directly reflects the economic situation of a country from one side. For developing countries, their economic foundation, foreign trade level and information industry technology are far behind those of developed countries and regions such as the United States and the European Union. They are in the position of importing countries in the international trade system. If they hold a zero tariff and completely open and free tariff policy for cross-border e-commerce, developed countries can easily occupy their domestic markets through cross-border e-commerce, which will not only have a huge impact on their domestic industrial industries, but will also greatly reduce their domestic tax revenues. Ultimately, the gap between developing countries and developed countries in cross-border e-commerce and even the entire international trade field will become increasingly larger, affecting the normal development of their own economic construction. For my country, although my country’s cross-border e-commerce is booming, it still cannot compete with developed countries such as the United States. Therefore, we still hold a taxation attitude towards the issue of cross-border e-commerce tariffs, which is also a tariff policy choice made according to my country’s national conditions. my country pursues to formulate tariff policies that are in line with my country’s development reality on the premise of conforming to the development trend of the world economy.
In terms of institutional establishment, the United States has added e-commerce clauses to the free trade agreements signed with many countries to expand the scope of cross-border e-commerce. In terms of tariffs, it is stipulated that each country exempts each other’s import tariffs, which promotes the export of American products; in terms of services, efforts are made to eliminate obstacles for small and medium-sized enterprises to use e-commerce and share public data on e-commerce. Germany adopts the EU common policy, only implementing export management for a few products, and implementing the EU’s unified quota management system for imports; each member state decides on its own tax system without violating EU regulations. Japan abolishes import tariffs on all products except agricultural products, and conducts extensive cross-border cooperation in areas such as investment and trade in services. Singapore initiated the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), pursuing a free trade policy, with no quota restrictions on imported products, and most products do not require import licenses.