Rethinking Philippine Tax Law for the Digital Economy

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The digital economy has been growing unprecedentedly. However, taxing digital transactions has remained a challenge for the government, given the content and structure of the country’s taxation law. This Policy Note proposes a method for tracing, visualizing, and analyzing digital transactions’ value flow. It argues that companies in e-commerce systems are linked through a value chain and the value flows in the digital sector vis-à-vis the degree to which tax law can capture these flows can be modeled as a network structure. Hence, it notes that rendering actors and flows of value as a network produces intuitive and mathematical analyses that could provide not only a positive description of the value flow but also normative evaluations that could guide tax policies. Finally, it highlights the need to optimize tax authority over digital platforms, establish a digital-ready tax administration system, expand the scope for investigation and liability, and increase international engagement.