Welcome everyone to the PWC Taxbyte podcast series.

My name is Peter Drey and today we have a podcast on the taxation of the digital economy.

I have with me a number of very great speakers on this topic and very experienced. We have

Evie Geertz, international tax experts and with a particular focus on Pillar 2, and Jens Kikens,

Gilles Franson, transfer pricing experts and with a more focus on Pillar 1. I suggest it's a broad

topic, so let's kick off immediately. And to start with

Jill, we always hear that these developments deal with tech companies, but can you explain

to the listeners what is it actually about? Yeah, thanks Peter and hello everyone. So let me

maybe start by taking a step back to the origin of the project.

So back in 2015, the OECD finalized the by now famous BEPS or base erosion and profit shifting project.

One of the items of the BEPS project, which was largely left unfinished, was BEPS Action 1,

which dealt with tax challenges

arising from digitalization of the economy. The underlying team in BEPS Action 1 was that

the current digitalization of the economy has led us to a situation where the international tax

framework, as it exists today, is no longer fit for purpose.

And this feeling that a change in the international tax framework was necessary does not really

disappear since then, but rather gained additional momentum.

Between the finalization of BEPS Action 1 in 2015 and today there's been quite a few technical papers

dealing with this topic of taxation and digitalization.

The latest set of materials which was produced is contained in two blueprint documents,

Pillar 1 and Pillar 2, which were issued by the OECD on the 12th of October,

and they basically lay out the key building blocks of what the tax framework in a more digitalized world would look like.

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