Earlier this month, the OECD (The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) provided an update on the work it has been doing into the challenge of how to globally address taxing the digital services offered by large technology companies.
The OECD which is an intergovernmental economic organisation, with 37 member countries, was due to be producing a report on Digital Services Tax (DST) in July, which has now been delayed until October. Despite this delay, which is due to the global pandemic, the OECD say they remain committed in their ambition to implement digital tax services.
Unsurprisingly, throughout the pandemic so far, there has been an increased use of digital services. The director of the OECD, Pascal Saint-Amans, says that the current crisis is highlighting this challenge and means there is a "renewed appetite for a number of countries" to put the GAFA (Google Apple Facebook Amazon) tax in place. Conversely, companies offering tax services are concerned that as they will likely be doing well during the pandemic, that they will then be targeted by the digital services tax.
In April the G20 echoed the OECD's plans to ensure DST implementation globally. There is not much more information to gather as to what the report from the OECD might entail as yet, or what any of the DST thresholds are likely to be. So, to find our more, we now have to wait for the delayed July report to be published in October, but clearly this tax is firmly on the radar and governments are working together to find solutions to the DST challenge.
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