Copyright belongs to the creative industries as the legal result of the creative process. It can be sold or licensed and often creates income. By its nature, copyright is highly mobile and can easily cross borders, because it can be split off from normal business activities and held as a separate asset. States are interested in stimulating or attracting copyright, as they believe this has a positive effect on their economic activities or because they want to support their artists. States may implement a broad range of tax incentives, which may focus on low-earning creatives, major companies with high copyright income, or anything in between. Copyright income can easily be taxed twice in cross-border situations, a situation that states try to prevent through the use of tax treaties. This leads to opportunities for international structuring. Limits on this structuring are currently being set internationally with the Anti Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) program. However, this should not necessarily affect well-intended copyright tax incentive schemes.

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doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-832-8_10, hdl.handle.net/1765/106652
Fiscal Autonomy and its Boundaries
Tax Law

Molenaar, D. (2017). Tax Incentives for Copyright (Chapter 10). In Tax Incentives for the Creative Industries (pp. 193–209). doi:10.1007/978-981-287-832-8_10