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OECD's update on the digital economy Earlier today, the OECD's G20 Inclusive Framework on BEPS published a Programme of Work to Develop a Consensus Solution to the Tax Challenges Arising from the Digitisation of the Economy, detailing the technical work to be undertaken in respect of revised... A turning point for environmental taxes There are currently hundreds of taxes throughout the European Union that are intended to be “environmental”. These taxes force European companies to bear very significant compliance costs - analyzing the tax rules, collecting the necessary information and... Rethinking our digital habits Unsurprisingly - given, for instance, the findings of last year's Ofcom Communications Market Report that most people in the UK are dependent on their digital devices and now check their smartphones, on average, every 12 minutes - more and more people hav... Regulating social media Last week, Facebook published its Community Standards Enforcement Report, evidencing high automatic detection rates for sexual, violent and terrorist content and the extent to which Facebook has taken action on such and certain other types of content. Whi... Technology and shipping - the high seas of antitrust? As you read this, there are more than five million shipping containers in circulation globally, transporting more than one trillion US dollars' worth of goods each year.  Container shipping has always been a traditional industry, conducted in large part b... Is a digital services tax State aid? A feature of all the DSTs described in Deeksha Rathi’s earlier post is that they apply only to digital businesses that generate global and domestic revenues above certain (generally very high) thresholds.  These proposed taxes focus solely on very large m... Is a digital services tax potentially State aid? State aid is not a tax specific concept, but rather a more general principle designed to stop EU member states from interfering in competition by giving selective advantages to particular taxpayers, in order to influence investment decisions or distort tr... What makes the UK so attractive to fintech? The recently published brochure, UK FinTech State of the Nation, summarises the UK's fintech industry and demonstrates the UK's attractiveness as a destination for innovation in finance. The UK is a global fintech leader with investors putting more money ... Should the potential for misuse stop us from embracing new tech? Facial recognition is back in the news this week as the South Wales police force defends its use of the technology after an office worker claimed it breached his privacy and data protection rights.  The technology in question allows the user to map faces ... Taxing the digital economy: my way or the highway will not lead to a longer-term solution There is a common recent development in the tax systems of the UK, France, Austria, Poland, Czech Republic, Italy, and Spain. All of these countries have announced some version of a digital services tax. The table below compares those versions briefly. Co...