TARIFFS, TAXES AND ELECTRONIC COMMERCE:REVENUE IMPLICATIONS FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Susanne Teltscher

No 5, UNCTAD Blue Series Papers from United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

Abstract: Cross-border electronic commerce is currently operating in a tax- and tariff-freeenvironment. This, combined with predictions of steep increases of e-commerce during the nextfive years, has prompted Governments and tax authorities to discuss modifications to existinglegislation that take account of these developments. One of their concerns is the potential lossin tax and tariff revenues resulting from e-commerce, which account for significant shares ofgovernment budgets in most countries. This is of particular concern to developing countries,where import duties comprise higher shares of government revenue and a shift to other revenuesources is economically less feasible. The paper presents data on potential revenue losses fromimport duties on a number of products that have been traded physically in the past but areincreasingly being imported digitally. Findings show that developing countries will be the mainlosers as far as import duties from e-commerce products are concerned, while both developingand developed countries would suffer major revenue cuts from lost consumption taxes.

Date: 2000
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