In the course of the last years, the OECD extensively dealt with tax issues generated by the increasing digitalisation of business models. While the focus on BEPS action 1 was clearly on the taxation of “digital business”, the OECD constantly enlarged the potential scope of its contemplations via “digitalised businesses” and finally ended up with a focus on “consumer-facing businesses” in the recent Secretariat Proposal of a “Unified Approach” under Pillar One.

Accordingly, it can be reasonably concluded already from a prima vista perspective that the proposal presented by the OECD Secretariat is far-reaching and could be applicable for all businesses, since – at the end of the day – all businesses are eventually intended to be consumer-facing. On the basis of the far-reaching scope, the OECD proposed a new sales-based nexus in order to overcome the pitfalls of the currently applicable (and to a certain extent outdated) concept of permanent establishments, which is solely based on a certain degree of physical presence in a host state. Finally, based upon the scope and nexus, the market jurisdictions should (ideally) profit from the proposal, as those states are intended to be alloca...