Electronic access to professional advice
There are various categories of professions which perform their consultancy like a consultant, lawyer, doctor or other professional service provider advises customers through email, chat rooms, video conferencing, or other remote means of communication. These services are opened for members and specific fee is required for log into the website as member. There various solicitors and legal consultants who made available themselves to their members for the purpose providing them advices on matter connect with legal problems. Health care is also an area in which services can be provided electronically . The health care and sale of drugs by e-commerce which has the tax direct implication on Pakistani jurisdiction which must be controlled for health concerns. There countless other professions who render their services at fixed price for their customer. There services are made accessible across the globe limiting the concept of state jurisdiction.
Stock Trading
The trend of making buying and selling securities have become common in among stock stockbrokerages and companies who has their Web sites with back of Java Scripts which allow customers to trade their securities electronically, including stocks, bonds, mutual funds, options, futures, and commodities. Customers can access and browse the information regarding stock prices of company and after researching the desired stock of company, an investor can place an order on-line, specifying the stock he wants to purchase, the number of shares and the price and minute of detail information regarding future prospects of the share stocks are displayed in various analysis for customer for judging the prevalent fluctuation of stocks. When the orders are placed at the market prices are completed and receipt of confirmation is sent back to purchaser in less than a minute. The trading is confirmed electronically and sometimes by mail into the e-mail address of buyer. The conventional ways of making payment are still prevailing in stocks buying and selling where stock are only viewed through electronic pages but the payment of money made through bank drafts and other negotiable instruments. At present, trades are still settled conventionally, although electronic money could be used in the making payment. In addition to trading in the secondary market and securities are now being offered for sale on-line.
Online auctions
The online auction of use and new stock are offered for sale through bidding which allowing buyer and seller to offer their goods in auction list for seller. There are various services provider web site operator who displayed their items for auction. The buyer simply login to website and choose a purchase the items directly from the owner of the items, rather than from the enterprise operating or web master of the site. The seller pay the web site operator commission price for sell of the item through the marketing mechanism of the web site operator. The seller of item pays the operator of web site in percentage of the sales price or a flat fee according to terms and conditions agreed between them.
Online Information
The use of seeking info through various search engines has become common but most common used search engine don’t charge anything from their user but these search engine charge fee from companies, enterprises, or other commercial entitles for adding their adding their information in search database. These electronic search databases have become widespread use for inquiry purposes among information seeker. Once the user has obtained the brief info the companies, hyperlink created with these info take the seeker by clicking on hyperlink displayed by these search engines take them to the original web site of company for getting more information about it. There are many search engines that perform specialized services which have been created computerized databases of reference information by that the seeker can get the required information, such as legal materials or newspaper and magazine articles which are listed accordingly and systemically. Customers can access and browse these databases and locate the desired information, which can be either read on-screen or allowed for printing often these services are performed free of charge but the operator of that database charge fee from enterprises for adding information and listing in database. There are many marriage brokerage database are maintained by the web site operator who charge for both parties considerable fee before allowing either party to access the required database for marital purpose. Many publisher allow their work to be let for sale in electronic form primarily reference works, are now being created, distributed and downloaded in digital format, either MS word or PDF, generally via CD-ROMs and it is question of discretion for tax authorities rather they place these electronic delivery of published work under sale tax as deliver of good has been made or put them under service heading. In addition, once information has been digitized, it can also be transferred electronically. Some encyclopedias and books are now available either on CD-ROM or through an on-line service.
Advertising
The advertisers pay too various popular websites for their advertisements for creating traffic on their website. The manner of advertisement is similar to advertisement in newspapers and magazines where so-called “banner ads?are small graphic images embedded in a web page and that banner when clicked by the user will load and create link with the web page specified by the advertiser in their www address. Advertising rates are most commonly specified on web sites on advertisement hyperlink. These advertisements are reciprocating by two website without payment of any money but they perform services. Many search engines creating info information also display their banner on inquiry of various words or phrase information by seeker of information. There are various web site operators who perform function of advertisement on commission basis and some time the basis the commission is fixed on number of times the viewers have clicked hyperlink banner.
Global dealing
The global dealing refers to the function performed by financial banks and securities firms for execution of customers' orders of taking proprietary positions of buying and selling of goods in stock exchanges in financial products in markets around the world at any time. The global trading is conducted on most fast electronic network instead of web site for various reasons and these private networks are operated for security reason because of involvement of large amount of financial transactions, instead of the Internet, which is another means of buying and selling of stocks as discussed above. The global business is conducted through electronic communication and question of taxation on these is business is ultimate concern and the means of communication is not relevant for tax purposes. Global dealing is not possible without modern communications technology and taking and closing position on international stock exchange are taken with fraction of second and these banks provide financial services like loan, sureties etc. for buying and selling stock which allows orders to be transmitted around the world and a firm's trading position to be continually transferred and displayed to locations where markets are open. The most crucial concern for tax authorities to figure out the exact amount of financial stock are traded and let open for buying and selling.
Offshore banking and incorporation
There are various financial institutes who offer online option of opening of accounts, closing, and transfer facilities to holder of bank account and result of these facilities provider by these financial institutes having offshore branch causing money laundering and safe haven for evasion of taxation. These institutes pursue the policy secrecy of account holders which further frustrate the efforts of taxing authorities to impose taxation on taxpayers. Some web sites now offer offshore incorporation and banking services with the capacity for payment by credit card electronically. The opening accounts into these are authenticated by State jurisdiction, where these banks are incorporated, are made relatively easier and Customers complete questionnaires on their computer, specifying the company name, desired jurisdiction, and numbers of shares which he wants to purchase or where he want he want to keep his money for tax purposes, etc. and this information is communicated to a service company, which prepares and files the necessary forms for opening of account. Although individuals and companies can create offshore corporations and open offshore bank accounts by use of these modern communications, these advancement of communication by electronic device has made it much easier and less expensive taxpayer to open account, transfer money, close and do trade while remaining in relatively less taxing jurisdiction where they can trade across the globally evading the resident state tax jurisdiction.
Downloading of digital products
There are various digital products which are opened for downloading into the buyer computer and the downloading facility. The browser the relevant page and selects an item from an online catalogue of software or other digital products available for digital transmission. The products are electronically directed to buyer after he has paid the price of product. These digital transmissions into The digital products are downloaded into the customer’s hard disk or other non-temporary media in CD of buyer occur with fraction of second and no separate charges to the customer for using the online catalogue. The buyer acquires various right over use that product, he has right to commercially exploit the copyright in the digital product e.g. a book publisher acquires a copyrighted picture to be included on the cover of a book that it is producing. The buyer gains the right to use software or other digital products for a period of time that is less than the useful life of the product. All copies of the digital product are deleted or become unusable upon termination of the license for period as the buyer has enter into commercial agreement for use that digital product. The digital products fall into the category of services because they are intangible in nature. Some time the service provider let the software or other digital product for sell or downloading on website and comes to contractual obligations to provide the customer with updates and add-ons to the digital product. The buyer acquires the right to download latest product without paying the price of new product. The buyer is granted the perpetual license to use a software product which he has downloaded. These types of software are used for financial management, inventory control, human resource management or other enterprise resource management software applications and prices of these digital products amount up to thousands of dollars.
The buyer receives the right to use software or other digital products same time while under going the contract with service providers. The product may be either downloaded in personal computer of buyer or used in remote server while undergoing where functions, these type of software are used in most advanced website who offer the web site hosting service and buyer can use the website building software’s are used while remaining login to remote server. The buyer right to make copies of the digital product other than using in remote server as required to use the digital product for its intended use depends of selling agreement. The software maintenance services are performed by computer programmer who evaluate the technical weakness of the software and provide the right solution its best use.
Web site hosting
There millions of web sites has been developed and let these site be browsed by internet view, these site needed to be hosted at server for getting www address for viewing it. Those sites that perform the service of hosting these are called web hosting site who charge monthly or annual charge for hosting pages of web site. Few well established companies have their own server but rest of them bound to host their site into remote server for making accessibility 24 hours a day 7 days a week available for their internet viewers. They provide fee for hosting sites offer space on its server to web sites. Service provide of the web sites obtain no rights and in the copyrights created by the developer of the web site content or trade mark right. There are various facilities are provided by these hosting site like remotely manipulate and change the site, including modifying the content on the site. The hosted sites pay annual fee and other charges for use their services based on the passage of time.These hosting sites also provide the facility for online selling of products which are conducted through the Active Server Pages or Java Pages. These hosting sites often have contract with companies of ASP or JSP service provider for use their software for online pages building. The provider makes available to the customer access to a software application hosted on computer servers owned and operated by the provider for purpose mentioned above. The software automates and runs a particular back-office business function for the buyer. There are various functions are provided by these hosting site like online build in tools for development of website and online pages. These licensed software offered by hosting site software automate sourcing, ordering, payment, and delivery of goods or services used in the customer’s business, such as office supplies or travel arrangements. The ASP licensed holders pay the provider of the software application a fee which is a percentage or annual premium depends upon the agreed terms and conditions.
Database services
There are various services are provided by the server operated and owned by service provider like upload, retrieve and manipulate data remotely with assistance of these soft wares. No software is licensed to the viewer of web site under this transaction. The viewer could be any person who stores its inventory records on the provider’s hardware and persons on the customer’s order desk remotely access this information to allow them to determine that rather orders could be filled from current stock or not.The service provider only provides information available to customer regarding the database related a repository of information available for customers to search and retrieve the information which he is intending to know. The benefit which the customers can draw is their ability to search and extract a specific item of data from amongst a vast collection of widely available data.
Customer support over a computer network
Some services provider render assistance of providing online technical support, including installation advice and trouble-shooting information. The seeker of information can login to web site and detailed the human technicians in form of questioning or in fulfilling the form of online technical documentation, a trouble-shooting database.
The service provider also has made a repository of information available to customers. In this case, however, the data is of greater value to the customer than the means of finding and retrieving it. The service provider lists significant hyperlink for purpose of giving first hand information but there are certain interrogatories that answers are not available in contents of web sites but the resulting product is not prepared for a specific customer and no obligation to keep its contents confidential is imposed on customers. These interrogatories are related with products including special industry or investment reports which are high in value require expert opinion. Such answer of such inquiries is sent in form of specialized reports are either sent electronically to subscribers or are made available for purchase and download from an online catalogue or index for negotiated price. There are numbers of technical information concerning a product or process is communicated to seeker of information by electronically delivers data to subscribers periodically in accordance with their personal preferences of seeker.
Hyperlinks to various Interactive web site
A large number of businesses are associated with the service to divert customer to web site by creating various hyperlinks. These services are made available to subscribers a web site featuring digital content, including information, music, video, games, and other links according to interest of viewer. Member to that website pays annual subscription at fixed periodic fee for getting access and linking to hyperlinked sites. The member of site interacts with the other sites while remaining login to the site and gets the online information as opposed to getting a product or services from the site.A web site operator pays various subscription charges to hyperlinked site for using their contents for news, stories, game, information, interesting hyperlinks and other online contents in order to attract users to the site. The web site of interacting page needed to engage service of other sites for making their own site interesting for other viewers. The contents service provider creates new contents or hyperlinks specifically for the web site.
Streamed web based broadcasting
In number of web site, the facility of audio, video and web based broadcasting is streamed of various conference, seminar, etc for academic and official purpose which are high in value which are made open for members to access it. The contents of broadcasting often online or in recording of database which can be downloaded with after paying the premium amount to the operator the site. These copyrighted audio or visual materials are only permitted for academic and research purpose not allowed to copy it. The Broadcaster receives subscription or advertising revenues.
Other services
The numberless other services are performed which can not placed under these heading mentioned above. The services performed in www have become limitless and operator of site are earning very lucrative money and successfully expending their business.
These are online delivery of goods by e-commerce means, the aim of brief description here to let the taxing authorities know of e-transaction which can also deliver of goods without any tangible record of transaction and these transactions are subject to imposition of taxation under Sale Tax Act of 1990. The e-services as mentioned above must be incorporated in schedules of central Excise Duties Act 1944 so as to provide legal foundation for imposition of imposition taxes
The writer is an advocate of High Court and practicing immigration and corporate laws in Pakistan since September 2001. He is a self employed and pioneer in research on electronic commerce taxation in Pakistan. His articles were published widely in the critical areas of cyber crimes, electronic commerce, e-taxation and various other topics. He wrote LL.M thesis on titled “Legislation of electronic commerce taxation in Pakistan?in which he provided comprehensive legal proposals for statutory reconstruction of tax laws for purpose of imposition of taxation on e-business in Pakistan. Currently he is conducting is research on topic ‘Electronic commerce taxation: emerging legal issues of digital evidence?Author can be contacted by adil.waseem@lawyer.com