This is what global tax reforms could mean for Asia's tech giants

Asia’s advanced and emerging market economies have several locally headquartered tech giants and host foreign companies.

So far, it’s been challenging for many Asian countries to tax tech giants because many are not physically but rather only digitally present in a country.

A new set of agreed global tax reforms will change where these tech giants and other global giants pay taxes, explain experts from the IMF. Investment hubs such as Singapore and Hong Kong SAR could lose up to 0.15% of GDP as a result.

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New global reforms will change where tech giants pay taxes in Asia and make the international tax system more robust.

Digitalization —the technology that powers fintech, e-commerce, and online services—enables us to make mobile money transfers, purchase goods and services online, and interact with people across the globe. It has created some of the largest global businesses, such as online platforms and marketplaces connecting producers and consumers across the world.

The agreed changes could spur more comprehensive reforms applied to all companies and to a larger share of profits.

Asia alone has roughly two billion internet users, with considerable room to grow. Asia’s advanced and emerging market economies have several locally headquartered tech giants—including Alibaba, JD.com, Tencent, Rakuten—and host foreign tech giants such as Facebook. A new set of agreed global tax reforms will change where these tech giants and other global giants pay taxes.

Asia has a large share of tech giants

a chart showing the global share of e-commerce machine — Image: IMF

Thus far, it’s been challenging for many Asian countries to tax tech giants especially because many are not physically but rather only digitally present in a country. Existing international norms for taxing profits, which many people consider to be outdated and unfair, haven’t kept up. Collecting taxes on cross-border digital services and small parcel e-commerce deliveries is also a challenge.

Changes afoot

Some Asian countries have started to introduce digital services taxes—withholding taxes on payments for cross-border digital services or user-based turnover taxes on digital activities. These, however, may become redundant if a new global system for profit taxation is adopted.

As of August 2021, the United States and most major Asian economies were among the 134 members of the Inclusive Framework led by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD-IF), agreeing to allocate taxing rights on profits to countries where consumers and users are located, reflecting the digital presence.

Details are still under discussion, but under the agreed global reforms, a portion of profits from multinationals with global sales above EUR20 billion (roughly the 100 largest global companies) will be allocated across countries in proportion to local sales and taxed under local laws.

In a new IMF staff paper, we survey the digital landscape in Asia and the effect of proposals, such as that from the OECD-IF, on corporate tax revenue across Asian countries. We also outline the pros and cons of digital services taxes and estimate their revenue potential. Finally, we calculate the potential additional revenue gains from collecting value-added tax on digital services and cross-border e‑commerce sales of goods.

Investment hubs such as Singapore and Hong Kong SAR could lose up to 0.15 percent of GDP in corporate tax revenue because the profits currently declared in these countries by multinationals exceed the local share of total sales.

Whereas high-income countries with large domestic markets—Australia, China, Japan, Korea—would gain revenue, developing countries such as Vietnam could lose revenue.

This article is published in collaboration with IMF Blog.
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