Justice, Equality and Tax Law

S. 1381. Introduction

In October 2021, a statement of the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on BEPS (Statement) was issued to address the tax challenges arising from the digitalization of the economy. The OECD and G20 have been discussed for a long time, and the Statement has been called a kind of historic agreement that will change the basic framework of international taxation. However, in the course of the prolonged discussion in the OECD up to the Statement, the subject of taxation and the principles changed significantly. Section 2. of this paper gives an overview of the documents published by the OECD/G20 in chronological order in order to examine the proposed scope and principle changes in the OECD discussions. Then, Section 3. compares the proposed EU Directive on Significant Digital Presence and the digital services tax with essentially the content of the OECD’s October 2021 Statement. Section 4. argues whether the Pillar 1 proposal can achieve just allocation and shows that the principle underlying the new tax regime has been shaken in the course of the discussion in the OECD. In addition, it is followed by a description of certain concerns and objections that emerging and developing countr...