introduction
impacts
byte tax
Australia
global
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global frameworks
This
page looks at global
frameworks.
national vs international
Jonathan Ricci's 1999 Richmond
Journal of Law & Technology paper
on the IRS versus International Cyberspace Transactions is a
useful introduction to legal and technological challenges.
The US Treasury Department's November
1996 paper
on Selected Tax Policy Implications of Global Electronic Commerce
remains of value.
The Electronic
Transactions Act 1999 is perhaps the major achievement of the
federal government's 'strategic framework for the information economy'
under the coordination of the National Office for the Information
Economy (NOIE). The
Attorney-General's Department has an e-Commerce
Homepage, primarily concerned with the Electronic Transactions
Act.
The Act reflects the Electronic Commerce Expert Group's 1998
Electronic
Commerce: Building The Legal Framework
report, which embraced
electronic signatures, recordkeeping, contracts, the UNCITRAL model code
for ecommerce, and other matters.
In Europe the European Commission late last year published a proposal
for a Directive
to "establish a coherent legal framework for electronic commerce
across the EU".
UNCITRAL
Information about the United Nations
Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) is
available on that body's website.
For a perspective on the
negotiating process, the players and likely outcomes we recommend Global Business Regulation (Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press 00) by John Braithwaite & Peter Drahos.
The Regulation of International Trade (London,
Routledge 99) by Michael Trebilcock & Robert Howse is
also of value in understanding global regulatory regimes.
technologies
One of the more interesting papers
- on Advancing Global Electronic
Commerce: Technology Solutions to Public Policy Challenges
- was published last year by the Computer Systems Policy Project (CSPP),
a group of CEOs from 12 computer companies such as IBM, Apple and Dell
that advocate positions on certain public policy matters.
It offers suggestions on how technology can be used to address the challenges of
taxation of e-commerce. These suggestions include use of software and
database technology to track tax rates by jurisdiction, authentication
techniques, electronic audit logs, and use of encryption and
authentication tools to prevent buyers and sellers from denying that
they engaged in a transaction.
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