Over six months we are convening experts in technical governance and economics to resolve the open questions standing between token taxes and a workable bill.
Can compute governance infrastructure be leveraged to reliably audit token taxes?
What are the legal challenges associated with implementing token taxes?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of token taxes compared to alternative taxation mechanisms such as compute taxes, VAT, and digital services taxes?
Can we model the impact of a token tax on the UK economy using LLM-powered agent-based modelling?
Token taxes promise to be more enforceable than alternative forms of taxation. Unlike corporation tax (which the European Commission estimates at 9.5% for digital services companies compared to 23.2% for traditional firms), token taxes take advantage of the unique properties of AI to prevent tax evasion.
In particular, they can leverage existing compute governance infrastructure for auditing and enforcement. In this way, token taxes can mitigate the concentration of power by allowing governments to capture AI-generated value.
Research Period
IPPR Policy Memo
Launch Event in Westminster
Future Research Streams