Taxation of business models based on content generation and streaming: analogical solutions to digital paradigms

Abstract

Economic modernity, represented by new digital business models that do not need a physical presence to establish themselves as leaders in multimillion dolar markets, has not been matched by legal-tax modernity. Our tax regulations are no exception and have lagged far behind in subjecting them to taxation. This is the case of the one based on the generarion of online content, in which two clearly differentiated actors intervene: on the one hand, the natural person who generates the content; and on the other, the intermediary platform that provides the service, generally for some digital giant. In the case of YouTube, it`s Google, and in the case of Twitch, it`s Amazon. Solutions have been proposed to address the problem, but frankly inefficient and certainly insufficient to address the reality and essence of that economic modernity.

For this reason, this work will analyze in depth the current tax regime of content generators and intermediary platforms, in order to propose solutions that either involve articulating new (special) tax regimes, or a reconfiguration of other recently created ones., but frankly not very useful, such as the Spanish Digital Services Tax.