The robots are coming, and they might have to pay tax Business DW 27.07.2017

A famous idiom states that nothing in this life is certain other than death and taxes. Yet, of the many ways that the films and novels of science fiction have imagined the roles of robots in our high-tech future, paying taxes has generally not been one of the functions dreamed up for our android friends. Nonetheless, the futuristic-sounding concept of a "robot tax" is now a real topic in Europe and beyond, if still being quite a distance from becoming a real thing. For many years, issues around the rapid digitalization of the working environment and the increasing use of automation and robotics have energized economic and social debate. A long established argument is that increasingly rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and automation - a so-called "robot revolution" - will ultimately leave huge numbers unemployed, with no sector of the labor market left untouched.