Julien Chaisse & Jamieson Kirkwood on Taxing the Future: Digital Stateless Income, Business Organisation, and the Search for a New Regulatory Paradigm (Singapore Journal of Legal Studies)

"Taxing the Future: Digital Stateless Income, Business Organisation, and the Search for a New Regulatory Paradigm"

Julien Chaisse & Jamieson Kirkwood

Singapore Journal of Legal Studies

Published in September 2022 

pp. 267-289

Abstract: At a time when “stateless income” is the main tax imperative, this article analyses the challenges of internationalising taxation of multinational enterprises in the digital economy and traversing the normative solutions provided so far (and still to be provided) by both coordinated and unilateral rules and policies. In such a way, this article is therefore firmly entrenched at an important intersection of comparative and business law. Considering that the main problem for tax authorities might be that they have remained national—and landlocked—whereas multinational enterprises operate globally—and virtually, this article also brings into the analysis the connected issues of free trade, globalization, and State sovereignty. The article demonstrates the necessity for international and multilateral solutions such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting project’s “Two-Pillar” solution and explains how this solution can be supplemented by other multilateral reforms.