2026

An 835-page European Commission study warns that Europe's cloud and AI infrastructure could fall short of rapidly growing demand, emphasizing that predictable national fiscal incentives play a vital role in accelerating data center investments and reducing strategic dependence on foreign providers. While highlighting how targeted tax exemptions and electricity relief drive digital infrastructure expansion across member states, the study rejects EU-wide tax credit harmonization in favor of closer national monitoring to complement the proposed Cloud and AI Development Act.

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Rawal demonstrates how in-kind consideration is an important part of the provision of digital services and explains how it should be taxed.

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Saeed argues that Ghana’s tax system inadequately captures income from nonresident digital businesses and proposes a tailored significant economic presence regime that could also serve as a model for other developing countries.

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WSJ's Editorial Board argues that Congressional Republicans should seize an opening to index the capital gains tax to inflation, contending that taxing unadjusted nominal gains unfairly inflates effective tax rates on middle-class investors and homeowners. Pointing to updated calculations by Arthur Laffer, the piece asserts that allowing taxpayers to step up their basis for inflation would eliminate the hidden tax penalty created by recent price surges and stimulate broader economic growth.

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The Italian Supreme Court is playing a big role in shaping the country’s intragroup pricing practices, pushing more rigorous economic analysis and better documentation as a steady stream of transfer pricing disputes reaches its docket, tax professionals say.

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Negotiators clashed over whether a draft U.N. tax convention protocol should supersede existing dispute mechanisms or preserve them during August 12-13 talks in New York. While OECD members and several allied jurisdictions advocated for protecting established bilateral procedures, the Africa Group pushed for the protocol to override existing pacts to resolve structural power imbalances; delegates also voiced divergent stances on mandatory arbitration and investor-state dispute settlement despite widespread backing for the mutual agreement procedure.

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The Australian government introduced legislation on August 13 to establish a new bargaining incentive that would impose a 2.5 percent tax on digital advertising revenue for major social media and search platforms that fail to strike commercial content deals with local news outlets. While revised provisions require tech giants to sign agreements with at least eight local publishers to offset liability, U.S. tech trade groups criticized the measure as a discriminatory levy that distorts digital trade and warrants U.S. government opposition.

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The Trump administration can continue to collect tariffs on low-dollar imports after a US trade court rejected a challenge to the president’s policies.

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The European Commission does not share the characterization of its Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism as a tariff, spokesperson Louise Bogey says at a daily press briefing in Brussels, responding to a question about an FT op-ed from US Ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder.

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Polish government is conducting “a very complex and sensitive analysis” of a planned digital tax, examining both the details of the levy and its potential impact on relations with the US, Prime Minister Donald Tusk says at press conference in Warsaw.

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