Post COVID-19 world and potential compensatory tax instruments in the context of the digital economy

Abstract

The year 2020 will mainly be associated in world history with the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The shutdown of the economies of nation states and other measures taken to prevent the spread of the dangerous contagious disease of COVID-19 have caused considerable (and not only) economic problems for states as well as for individuals. It is therefore clear that this situation will also affect public budgets, both in terms of revenue and expenditure (e.g. the state incurs higher expenditures to compensate for the adverse effects of the pandemic on the private sector). The situation will certainly be a basis for refl ection and reassessment of the current tax system, and it is possible that its impact will contribute (among other things) to the introduction of new taxes, the essence of which could be based on the digital economy. The paper deals with this issue, in which the authors set themselves the goal of verifying the hypothesis of whether the COVID-19 disease pandemic will be a stimulus for the introduction of so-called digital taxes.