European VAT and the Sharing Economy

European VAT and the Sharing Economy aims to understand whether the current European Value Added Tax (EU VAT) system is sufficiently equipped to deal with the ongoing transformation of the supply chain as well as the increasing digitalization of the economy ushered in by the rise of multisided digital platforms. New digital platforms such as those of the sharing economy, have dramatically expanded the range of possibilities for exchanging anything required by business or personal needs, from accommodation to rides. In the virtual marketplaces shaped and ruled by these novel matchmakers, rather than by a single centralized entity, value is created through the granular interaction of many dispersed individuals. By allowing instantaneous and smooth interaction among millions of individuals, platforms have indeed pushed the digital frontier farther to include within it even services, such as accommodation and passenger transport, whose provision was once not possible from a remote location.