The engineering of complex software systems is often the result of a highly collaborative effort. However, collaboration within a multinational enterprise has an overlooked legal implication when developers collaborate across national borders: It is taxable. In this short article, we discuss the unsolved problem of taxing collaborative software engineering across borders. We (1) introduce the reader to the basic principle of international taxation, (2) identify three main challenges for taxing collaborative software engineering, and (3) estimate the industrial significance of cross-border collaboration in modern software engineering by measuring cross-border code reviews at a multinational software company.

翻译：复杂软件系统的工程实现通常是高度协作的成果。然而，跨国公司内部开发者的跨境协作存在一个被忽视的法律影响：它具有纳税义务。本文简要探讨了跨境协作式软件工程征税这一尚未解决的问题。我们（1）向读者介绍国际税收的基本原则，（2）识别出协作式软件工程跨境征税面临的三大主要挑战，以及（3）通过测量某跨国软件公司的跨境代码评审量，评估跨境协作在现代软件工程中的行业重要性。