Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Winter 2021
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic caused both a surge in technology use and a deterioration in government finances. At the same time, big tech companies are under scrutiny by lawmakers for tax avoidance, antitrust issues, and other concerns. These realities call for governments to reassess tax policy toward tech companies and for tech companies to reassess legal strategy toward taxes. State and federal governments' tax bases are eroding because of the noncash, barter nature of modern transactions. When a taxpayer uses “free” digital services such as e-mail, social media, or search engines, she pays via access to her personal data or attention. From a legal and policy standpoint, these barter transactions should be taxed just as if cash had changed hands, but because it is not practicable to identify, value, and tax the data and time of each user, they have escaped taxation, giving many tech companies an unintended tax advantage. To address this unfairness, this article proposes a surrogate tax, through which the tech company acts as a proxy to pay the tax that is technically the liability of its users. In contrast to Digital Services Taxes (DSTs), which have been the main focus of policy makers and the extant literature, surrogate taxes adhere closely to standards of good tax policy, providing an administrable means of capturing untaxed digital barter while advancing fairness across the industry's business models. From a legal strategy standpoint, this article argues that tech companies themselves should support surrogate taxes, to avoid facing more onerous, “sin”-like taxes, such as DSTs.
Copyright Statement
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article:
Cowan, M.J., Cutler, J. & Baxter, R.J. (2021). Strategic Surrogates or Sad Sinners: U.S. Taxation of Bartering in Digital Services. American Business Law Journal, 58(4), 849-890,
which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/ablj.12196. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions. This article may not be enhanced, enriched or otherwise transformed into a derivative work, without express permission from Wiley or by statutory rights under applicable legislation. Copyright notices must not be removed, obscured or modified. The article must be linked to Wiley’s version of record on Wiley Online Library and any embedding, framing or otherwise making available the article or pages thereof by third parties from platforms, services and websites other than Wiley Online Library must be prohibited.
Publication Information
Cowan, Mark J.; Cutler, Joshua; and Baxter, Ryan. (2021). "Strategic Surrogates or Sad Sinners: U.S. Taxation of Bartering in Digital Services". American Business Law Journal, 58(4), 849-890. https://doi.org/10.1111/ablj.12196