Abstract
The past few years have seen the sensational rise of new models of production, distribution and consumption, synthetically referred to as the "sharing economy". The advent of such new economic models, underpinned by digital platforms like Airbnb, Uber, GuestToGuest and BlaBlaCar, poses however several challenges in the legal field. Against this background, the research seeks to assess the practical feasibility to apply a tax, such as the European VAT, which was conceived in the 1960s, to the reality of the sharing economy. In particular, through the help of several interpretative sources and a framework of selected tax principles, the study relates the specifics of the sharing economy to the following EU VAT propositions: the concepts of "taxable persons" and "taxable transactions", the CJEU's doctrine on "composite supplies", the "place of supply" rules, and the attribution to platforms of a "liability for collection and remittance of VAT". Building on such analysis, the author finally formulates a series of recommendations for improving the current EU VAT system.