应对数字经济的增值税法完善

Perfection of Legislation on VAT for Addressing Digital Economy

我国已经进入数字经济时代,面对具有去物理化、虚拟化、移动化、碎片化、全球化等特征的数字经济交易,增值税法律制度已经面临适用上的极大挑战。总体上,为解决数字经济交易的概念界定尚不明确和周延、与传统经济交易间存在不合理的差别待遇、消费地征税原则下实施地有待明确和细化、征管措施不健全以及国际双重征税或不征税等问题,增值税法完善应当贯彻中性原则,以实现数字经济交易征税的确定性、高效、公平和简化为目标,并与其他国家和地区应对数字经济的增值税法相协调。具体建议包括对数字经济交易统一界定并命名为销售电子化服务,统一适用6%的低税率,明确消费地征税原则并扩大适用到国内数字经济交易,对消费所在地的确定标准基于数字经济特点进行细化,对跨境数字经济交易或者取消来源地征税或者扩大适用零税率的范围,引入现代化的一站式增值税征管系统,等等。

China has entered the era of digital economy and the application of VAT rules to digital transactions(transactions on digital economy),characterized by dematerialization,virtualization,mobilization,fragmentation and globalization,already faces great challenges.In other words,there are some imperfections in the current Chinese VAT rules at issue.For example,the definition of digital transactions is unclear and incomplete,there are unreasonable differences in treatment between traditional transactions and digital transactions,the place where the digital transactions occur under the principle of destination taxation is ambiguous,the collection and management measures are not perfect,and the international double taxation or non-taxation happens.The perfection of the VAT rules should implement the principle of neutrality,in order to achieve the certainty,efficiency,fairness and simplification of taxation on digital transactions,and harmonize with the VAT rules at issue of other countries and regions.The main suggestions are as follows:defining the digital transactions as sales of electronic services,uniformly applying a reduced tax rate of 6%,clarifying the principle of destination taxation and expanding its application also to domestic digital transactions,refining the criteria for determining the location of consumption based on the characteristics of the digital economy,eliminating the source taxation for cross-border digital transactions or expanding the application scope of zero-rate taxation,and introducing a modern one-stop VAT collection and management system.