Challenging the nexus for the taxation of digital service

The market for digital services has exploded in recent years, stimulated by the emergence of social media and other platforms that primarily source their revenues from advertisement and the utilization of user data. Governments have taken notice of these trends as well as the ability of companies to source revenues from users in their respective nations, while letting them tax in countries with preferential tax treatment. While there have been initiatives in the international community to adapt the existing nexus of permanent establishment in order to deal with these differences, the lack of progress has led individual governments to focus on the separate taxation of digital services. The book aims to address this prominent area in international taxation. The research results outline a growing preference for a digital service tax in order to better deal with these services, ensuring that the user jurisdiction has the right to the taxation. A separate taxation of digital services may also be beneficial as it takes on the form of consumption-based tax and hence reduces the tax competition between various governments.