Digital Currency - may be a 'bit player' now, but in the longer term a 'game changer' for tax

Abstract

The Prime Minister of Australia, the Hon Malcolm Turnbull MP, has announced that the tax system is one of the key levers the government has to promote economic activity and that tax is at the centre of the whole productivity agenda. This paper draws attention to how technological developments in the monetary field will have major ramifications in respect of the capacity of governments to control the economic agenda, including tax. With changes to what is "money", it might not be prudent for governments and their advisers to assume that levers to control the composition of tax which existed in the twentieth century will continue to be available in the coming decades of the twenty first century.