Abstract:

The advent of the digital age has undermined the foundational assumptions of tax law governance. The failure to adequately identify the tax-bearing capacity of digital subjects through taxable objects reveals the explanatory deficiency of the homogeneous taxpayer assumption. The “core-periphery” structure inherent in digital economic networks has reshaped China's regional development patterns, diminishing the appropriateness of the regional homogeneity assumption while intensifying demands for localized, autonomous tax governance. The rise of the digital economy has also induced multidimensional complexity in social facts. This obstructs the translation of social realities to tax law facts, thereby challenging the assumed verifiability of social facts. Thus, the construction and implementation of tax law must incorporate subjective factors into the measurement of taxable capacity under the ability-to-pay principle; configure local tax authority according to the digital economy's geographic characteristics; and, establish flexible mechanisms to translate social facts to tax law facts based on bounded cognitive rationality. At the institutional level, critical reforms should include imposing enhanced tax obligations and cooperative duties on specific digital entities, appropriately decentralizing determination power over tax elements, and relaxing categorization methodologies. These adaptations constitute the essential institutional innovations necessary to respond to digital transformation.

Key words: digital economy, tax law governance, ability-to-pay principle, statutory taxation, tax Law facts