Digital services taxes - consensus approach from all nations needed

Singapore

CONSPICUOUSLY missing from the recent G-7 finance ministers meetings, which participants boasted had yielded a "historic tax deal", was an agreement on how the group would handle taxes on digital services.

With the increasing digitalisation of the world economy, the challenges of ring-fencing tax revenues arising from such services are growing; yet, with digital services taxes (DSTs) already imposed unilaterally by some jurisdictions and deemed unfair by others, an agreement at the G-7 level may not be what the world - and Singapore, in particular - needs.