Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

It is imperative that a strategy and approach be undertaken to address MNE business models and challenges regarding taxing the digitalized economy, and that legislative measures are enacted to preserve or expand Africa’s tax base. Overall, the potential gains from Digital Sales Tax are significant, as inclusion of digital services tax, may subsequently increase revenue that may be utilised for developing States, particularly at a time of high State expenditure to alleviate the economic and social impact of Covid-19. You could include some benefits from countries that have imposed unilateral taxation legislation highlighted above to showcase the potential gains.

This symposium addresses issues such as the low tax to GDP ratio in developing states, the broken social contract in these countries and the reforms needed to repair the social contract. The convener, in accepting the invitation of Afronomicslaw to host the tax symposium, called upon tax practitioners, academics, policy experts, philosophers, administrators, to offer insights on the relationship between taxation and the social contract

Under the Model Conventions, each African country has lost taxation rights over cross-border workers who have been evacuated from it but who are still deriving income from it through telework. Telework, a term originally coined by Jack Nilles, is ‘the activity of working from home while communicating with your office by phone or email, or using the internet’. The COVID-19 pandemic has made social distancing an imperative and, consequently, we are witnessing an unprecedented reliance on telework.

The call for an open, rules-based approach to investment facilitation at the multilateral level is informed by a tipping point in the international investment arena. As discussed below, this paradigm shift and various precedental challenges have made it imperative to seek international investment policy coherence.