Taxation on the Blockchain: Opportunities and Challenges

Rapidly changing digital landscape and emergence of disruptive technologies produces opportunities and challenges for private as well as public sector. New advances such as Blockchain, which is a distributed disintermediated platform that enables trade in value between non-trusted parties peer-to-peer, to markets and sectors of economy, which rely on trusted third parties. Looking beyond this issue into a nature of the technology that comprises blockchain, i.e. distributed ledgers and smart contracts, and the benefits of blockchain become apparent. The system operates an open, transparent, shared ledger of immutable transactions. The ledger is permanent and tamper-proof. Public and tax administration can benefit from the transparency and immutability, as it should increase compliance, accountability and the reduction of the opportunities for fraud. Smart contracts are essentially pieces of the self-executing code, which enable real-time automatic compliance, thus massively reducing the transaction costs and fraud.
The article considers how blockchain technology is compatible with such taxes as VAT, payroll and transfer pricing; considers the necessary prerequisites of the supporting governance infrastructure and summarizes country initiatives.