Taxation in the Digital Economy: New Models in Asia and the Pacific

A robust and efficient tax administration in a modern tax system requires effective tax policies and legislation. Policy frameworks should cover all aspects of tax administration and include the essential processes of capturing, processing, analyzing, and responding to information provided by taxpayers and others concerning taxpayers’ affairs. By far the greatest challenges facing tax administrations in all countries are those posed by the continuing developments in the digital economy. Whereas societies are grappling to come to terms with the transitions from the third industrial or digital revolutions, revenue authorities grapple with the consequences for the sustainability of their tax bases and the efficient administration and collection of taxes. This book presents a critical review of the status of tax systems in Asia and the Pacific in the era of the digital economy.

The book suggests how countries can maximize their domestic resource mobilization when confronted by the challenges that digitalization inevitably produces, as well as how they can best harness or take advantage of aspects of digitalization to serve their own needs. The full implications of the COVID-19 crisis are still too uncertain to predict, but it is clear that the crisis will accelerate the trend towards digitalization and also increase pressures on public finances. This, in turn, may shape the preference for, and the nature of, both multilateral and unilateral responses to the tax challenges posed by digitalization and the need to address them.

This book will be a timely reference for those researching on taxation in digital economy and for policy makers.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www .taylorfrancis .com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Nella Hendriyetty is a Senior Economist in the Capacity Building and Training Department of the Asian Development Bank Institute in Tokyo, Japan. She previously served as deputy director for the G20 forum at the Fiscal Policy Agency, Ministry of Finance, Indonesia from 2016 to 2019. She was also a Senior Compliance Officer in the Indonesia Financial Intelligence Unit (INTRAC/PPATK) from 2005-2010 and Head of the Sub-Division of Accounting Compliance for Securities Institutions in the Indonesian Capital Market Supervisory Agency (now the Financial Service Authority/OJK) from 2004 to 2005. She holds a PhD in economics from Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia, and a MSc in Finance from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, United States.

Chris Evans is a professor of taxation in the School of Accounting, Auditing and Taxation at UNSW Sydney and an Extraordinary Professor in the Department of Taxation at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He is also an International Research Fellow at Oxford University and a Visiting Professor at various other world class institutions. He has held senior positions in the United Kingdom’s (then) Inland Revenue and in a boutique international tax consultancy in London. He holds a PhD from UNSW Sydney, masters’ degrees in education and in international politics from Leeds University and Leicester University, and an honors degree in economics from London University.

Chul Ju Kim is a former deputy dean of the Asian Development Bank Insitute in Tokyo, Japan. Previously, he was a secretary to the President of the Republic of Korea for economic and financial affairs. For more than 30 years, he has been a key policy maker, dealing with a wide range of macroeconomic, financial, and social issues. He was deputy minister for planning and coordination, director general of the Economic Policy Bureau, and director general of the Public Policy Bureau, Ministry of Strategy and Finance. He also has extensive experience in international development, specifically at the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. He holds a BA in economics from Seoul National University, Republic of Korea, and an MS in finance from Georgia State University, United States.

Farhad Taghizadeh-Hesary is an associate professor of economics at Tokai University in Japan, and a visiting professor at Keio University, Japan. He completed his master’s degree in energy economics from Tehran University, Iran, in 2011 and subsequently obtained a PhD in energy economics from Keio University in 2015 with a scholarship from the Government of Japan (MEXT). He taught as an assistant professor at Keio following the completion of his PhD until March 2018 and as an assistant professor at the faculty of political science and economics of Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, during 2018-2020.