Research On The Legal Issues Of Value-Added Tax In China Under The Background Of Digital Economy

With the development of economic globalization,China has also taken the train of digital economy and entered the stage of rapid development.According to data from2022,the added value of China’s digital economy has reached 50.2 trillion yuan,becoming an important driving force for economic growth.The "14th Five-Year Plan for Digital Economy Development" points out that the digital economy,as an emerging economic form in the wave of digitization in China,differs from traditional economic forms in that it is based on communication networks,data resources as the production factor,and deeply integrates with modern communication technology to form a new economic form that digitizes all scale factors,which can promote the unity of fairness and efficiency.The accelerated integration of digital technology and traditional economy has formed new industries,new formats and new models,significantly improved total factor productivity and helped accelerate the modernization of the industrial system.However,the rapid development of the digital economy has led to the inability of the existing tax legal system to adapt to its changes.For example,the difficulty of obtaining tax-related information has greatly increased,the traditional tax collection and management law cannot adapt to the development of the digital economy,and the difficulty of tax supervision by the tax authorities has increased.Tax is not only the source of national finance,but also the premise and foundation for the practice of national governance capacity,and also an important normative tool for the country to conduct public governance.It can regulate and guide the healthy and orderly development of economic society.Building a scientific tax law system is an important way to address the challenges of the digital economy.As the largest tax category in China,value-added tax has a high proportion of tax revenue and a wide range of taxes.It has a large impact on China’s economy and society,and its legal system is indispensable and has also been challenged by the innovation of the digital economy.As the relevant provisions of the value-added tax legal system are most relevant to the purpose of trading digital products and services,and as the value-added taxreform is in line with China’s national strategic objective of reducing fees and taxes.This thesis first explores the common problems faced by the tax legal system.The development of the digital economy has led to problems such as the difficulty of tax collection,the absence of tax fairness,and the lack of efficiency.Next,take the value-added tax legal system as the representative,and explore the difficulties under the background of digital economy by seeking individuality in the commonality.Firstly,the concept of digital economy and service is not clearly defined in the value-added tax legal system,which leads to the law-enforcement personnel being unable to rely on in the process of collection;Secondly,under the background of digital economy,the transaction has the characteristics of virtuality and intangibility,which also leads to problems such as difficult to determine the taxpayer and imperfect collection management system;Finally,the lack of fairness in the tax legal system is due to the unclear tax jurisdiction between provinces.In response to the above-mentioned problems,this thesis will put forward suggestions for improvement,with a view to achieving the healthy development of the digital economy and improving China’s value-added tax legal system.First,adhere to the principle of combining the universality of the value-added tax law with the particularity of the digital economy,not only give full play to the universality of value-added tax on digital products and services,but also formulate special legal provisions and judicial interpretations according to its characteristics;Second,clarify the definition and tax classification of digital products and services.After classifying digital products and services as taxable services in general,we can also make a more detailed distinction based on the different characteristics of digital products and services;Third,clarify the scope of taxpayers,regulate the behavior of intermediary entities in the digital economy,establishing a fairer tax environment and improving the efficiency of our value-added tax collection.Fourth,based on the experience of OECD and the European Union,the value-added tax revenue generated by digital trading activities will be collected according to the principle of destination,that is,the principle of consumption,to alleviate the problem of mismatch between provincial value-added tax revenue and tax burden in the context of digital economy.Fifth,optimising the interconnection between tax authorities of domestic tax jurisdictions and third-party platforms to promote tax fairness.