국제적 디지털 거래에서의 고정사업장 과세 문제

This study is to investigate controversies surrounding digitalized products and services on a permanent establishment especially when it supplies products and services to foreign countries which do not have establishments in Korea. Generally, custom can legislate the burden of the tax on products when they are imported through cross-border. However, when they are changed into digitalized rights and services, the custom cannot recognize the transaction. Therefore, it is possible to use the products and services without paying tax through web server in a foreign country. Furthermore, the internet and relevant economy are increasing and the characteristics of transactions of digitalized contents are changeable and complicated in the modern society. Now, the traditional concept of permanent establishment cannot deal with these problems. OECD and G20 countries held Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Projects in 2014 to cope with these problems and suggested the solution to the tax challenges of the digital economy. The multinational corporations are trying to abuse the concept of the permanent establishments to avoid tax because the government cannot impose the burden of tax on foreign companies which do not have establishments in the country. If they use the internet server to supply the digitalized services and contents such as e-book, games, etc., many countries will take pains to classify the deals within their countries’ revenue power. This study will show the solutions to the problems which the new statute cannot overcome regarding the special issues and the available developments and inspect the precedent which is not compatible with the Revenue’s restatements and analysis in the field of web server. Recently, Korea Revenue legislated Article 53-2 in VAT called Special Provision for Electronic Services and Rights provided by foreign businesses simplified registration last December. It is anticipated to solve the logical contradiction of the reverse charge (self-assessment) and strengthen the destination principle of taxation. However, the statute has some problems which cause confusion when people interpret the concept of establishment in VAT compared with the permanent establishment in Corporation Tax and income Tax rules. Therefore, the government has to specify the details of the differences between the simplified registration and permanent establishment.