Digital taxes as a part of fiscal policy have been either proposed, announced, or implemented by numerous governments worldwide, including countries in Southeast Asia. Such policies are introduced to capture the tax revenue potency derived from the digital economy. This study examines the digital tax policies in six Southeast Asian countries, namely Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Data were collected from a literature survey on scholarly databases and online articles that discussed the digital tax policies in the respective countries. This paper contributes to the taxation discipline by presenting and analysing the current landscape of digital taxes across Southeast Asian countries. This study uncovers that in Southeast Asia, only these six states already have political agendas with taxation on the digital economy. These countries are the largest economies with the highest growth of the digital economy in the region. Most of them are also the member states of the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS). Besides, the main finding of this study is that the regional trend of digital taxes in Southeast Asia is imposing consumption tax and digital service tax on digital trades. The measures for direct tax, however, have yet to be taken by the policymakers due to the absence of international consensus on taxing rights allocation over the profits of multinational digital enterprises.

Keywords: Digital Economy, Digital Tax, Literature Review, Southeast Asia, Tax Policy, Taxation