Electronic Taxable Person – The Last Stage of Evolution of Taxpayer’s Personality?
Summary: A taxpayer is a person who is required by law to pay the tax. Historically, a taxpayerhas been a physical entity since the appearance of tax, before the new era, by the end of 19th century, when the appearance of corporations led to the spread of the term of taxpayer to legal entities. The development of modern concepts of taxation resulted in the acceptance of a group of personally connected individuals with the taxpayer of income tax, and later groups of legal entities with a single taxpayer of VAT and income tax. The development of digitization, elecommunications and robotics has recently stirred up a debate on a new category of taxpayers – robots and a new concept of electronic tax capacity. The essence of the idea is the standpoint of the tax neutrality, that is, the equal tax treatment of work, regardless of whether the work is performed by a man or a robot. The new work taxation concept should, on the one hand, eliminate the current tax discrimination of laborintensive companies in relation to automated companies, and, on the other hand, replace the lost revenues from taxation of man’s work. Acceptance of the concept of electronic tax capacity and personalization of robots for tax purposes basically results in a thorough redefinition of the basic postulates of taxation theory.
Key words: taxpayer, ability to pay tax, robot tax
Rezime: Poreski obveznik je lice koje je po zakonu dužno da plati porez. Istorijski, poreski obveznik je od pojave poreza, prije nove ere, do kraja XIX vijeka bio fizičko lice, da bi pojava korporacija dovela do širenja pojma poreskog obveznika na pravna lica. Razvoj savremenih koncepta porezivanja rezultirao je prihvatanjem grupe personalno povezanih pojedinaca obveznikom poreza na dohodak, a kasnije grupe pravnih lica jedinstvenim obveznikom PDV-a i poreza na dobit. Razvoj digitalizacije, telekomunikacija i robotike je u novije vrijeme podstaknuo raspravu o novoj kategoriji poreskih obveznika – robotima i novom konceptu elektronske poreske sposobnosti . U osnovi ideje nalazi se stajalište o neutralnosti poreza, odnosno o jednakom poreskom tretmanu rada, bez obzira da li rad obavlja čovjek ili robot. Novi koncept oporezivanja rada bi trebao, s jedne strane, ukloniti sadašnju poresku diskriminaciju radno-intenzivnih kompanija u odnosu na automatizovane kompanije, a, na drugoj strani, nadomjestiti izgubljene prihode od oporezivanja rada čovjeka. Prihvatanje koncepta elektronske poreske sposobnosti i personalizacije robota u poreske svrhe u osnovi ima za posljedicu temeljito redefiniranje osnovnih postulata teorije oporezivanja.
Ključne riječi: poreski obveznik, poreska sposobnost, porez na robote.