How Europe manages the sharing economy

Many of them, like Uber, Airbnb and YouTube, are
registered abroad and can not be ordered under
current rules to provide information to the national
tax authorities.
Everyone is responsible for declaring their own
income and it is the local right that applies," says
Karine Froger, PayPal's head of communication in
France and Belgium.
BLIND SPOT
Rebecca Filis works as a shared economy expert
in the Swedish tax agency, Skatteverket.
The agency published an analysis in 2016 about
system.
”Platforms like Uber, PayPal, AirBnb and alike
for income taxation, our report concluded,” says
Rebecca Filis.
However, the platform owners do not consider
themselves as employers, which would oblige
them to pay social contributions or withhold taxes
from employees' incomes.
”It is a blind spot and one of the biggest challenges
for the authorities and the legislators when we have
these new business models," she says.
"No one under 18 can have a PayPal account.
GLOBALISATION
The Nordic welfare states are all based on tax
structures that were established around one
hundred years ago.
In Denmark, for example, the foundation of its tax
legislation dates back to 1922, and does not take
the modern economy into account.
”Most Nordic countries will try to adapt the existing
laws to the shared economy,” says Rebecca Filis.
”But the more I think about it, the more I realise
that this is not only about the shared economy. We
need to think bigger, this is about the digitalisation
and globalisation of the economy”.
address with the regulations from the 1920s. It is
no longer B2C [business to consumer] relations.
What happens to ownership in the future? Will we
own cars at all in future?” she wonders.
Photo: acanyi
SHARING ECONOMY & EUROPE MAY 2017— 27