Tax Law and Digitalization : The New Frontier for Government and Business: Principles, Use Cases and Outlook

New technologies are changing the way that tax administrations, taxpayers and their advisers interact, leading to a reduction in the compliance cost for taxpayers, a level playing field for large and small businesses, and fewer opportunities to engage in aggressive tax practices. Although entering a new world where processes are supported by machines inevitably disrupts traditional ways of working, the contributors to this indispensable book reveal the enormous potential of 'tax technology' to positively transform tax compliance, clearly showing both government and business how to manage the transition from the old to the new.

With detailed treatment of the technology available in the tax field, the authors describe how to secure its benefits in such ways as the following:

• electronic balance sheets and invoices;
• automated transmission to tax authorities;
• innovative analytics applications;
• blockchain in tax law processes;
• process mining in VAT;
• real-time reporting with cryptography; and
• meeting the challenges to taxpayers' rights to privacy and personal data protection.

The contributions draw on an international conference held under the auspices of the Digital Economy Taxation Network at the Vienna University of Economics and Business in December 2020.

The perspective throughout focuses on how to achieve better tax compliance at a lower cost. For this reason, this full-scale, practical guide on how to adapt tax law to new technologies and how to apply tax tech processes in practice will be welcomed by tax practitioners, tax administrations, and academics across the entire tax community.

Prof. Dr Jeffrey Owens headed up the OECD’s tax work for over twenty years. He trained as an accountant and economist. He has also published widely in the area of public finance. After retiring from the OECD in 2012, Prof. Dr Owens took up a post as Professor and Director of the WU Global Tax Policy Center at the Institute for Austrian and International Tax Law, WU (Vienna University of Economics and Business), a research fellowship at the European University Institute in Florence, a part-time position as a Senior Policy Advisor to the Global Vice Chair of Tax at EY, and he is an advisor to a number of governments and organizations. Prof. Dr Robert Risse, lawyer and financial advisor, has been the head of the Tax and Trade department of Henkel AG & Co. KGaA since 2000 and is globally responsible for all topics and projects related to taxation and customs. From 1991 to 1998, Prof. Dr Risse was responsible for corporate group management in the areas of national and international tax law in the tax department of Mannesmann AG, and from 1997 to 1999, he was the head of the Tax and Risk Management department of Deutsche Post AG. Prof. Dr Risse is, among other things, on the board of the Rhein-Ruhr Discussion Group of the International Fiscal Association (IFA) (so-called IFA West), and is a member of the tax advisory examining board at the Ministry of Finance of North Rhine-Westphalia. Since August 2017, he has been Honorary Professor for Tax Compliance and Applied Tax Planning at the Institute of Accounting, Finance and Taxation at the University of Leipzig chaired by Prof. Carmen Bachmann. Since December 2017, he has been the Chairman of the board of directors for the WU Transfer Pricing Center at the Institute for Austrian and International Tax Law, WU (Vienna University of Economics and Business).