Commissioner of Taxation v Resource Capital Fund IV LP [2019] FCAFC 51 addressed a number of fundamental international tax issues. The case concerned a gain from the sale of shares in an Australian incorporated public company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange by two Cayman Island limited partnerships whose partners included residents of the United…

Mutual agreement procedure (MAP) pursuant to article 25 of the OECD and UN Model treaties imposes obligations on tax administrations. Inadequacies in the performance of these obligations has been the subject of much work by the OECD in the course of the 21st Century. BEPS Action 14 OECD Action 14 – 2015 Final Report, Making…

Some issues tax issues never go away. The source of income or gain is one of them. Two recent decisions, one Australian, and the other South African, have considered this fundamental issue. Both cases involve the natural resource sector. Each relates to a fact pattern that is frequently found in the sector. Correct identification of…

The financial crisis of 2008 and the Great Recession that followed led to millions losing their jobs and their homes. In Europe, the governments reacted to the pressure on the Eurozone by imposing austerity and sharply cutting the social safety net. While the Obama Administration made no such cuts, the size of the US fiscal…

The High Court of Kenya gave judgement on 15 March 2019 on a challenge to the validity of the Kenyan-Mauritius double tax treaty in Tax Justice Network- Africa v Kenya Revenue Authority and others.  The petitioners had sought a declaration that the treaty had not been subjected to the ratification of domestic law and the…

Jonathan Schwarz has already briefly discussed the CJEU’s judgment in the “Danish Beneficial Ownership Cases” (C-115/16, C-118/16, C-119/16, C-299/16 and C-116/16 and C-117/16), noting that the cases “represent a landmark on beneficial ownership” and comparing them to recent international tax law jurisprudence, concluding that the “voyage of discovery is certainly not at and end”. In…

The Debate What makes a tax system competitive? How can countries multiply the competitiveness of the existing system? These question-marks are attracting substantial research by today’s policy makers, at national and international level as well as by business lobbyists. Most importantly, their potential replies entail significant impact for taxpayers and the society in general. Indicatively,…

The judgements of the CJEU in N Luxembourg 1 v Skatteministeriet (Case C-115/16) and joined cases and in T Danmark (Case C-116/16)  and another joined case, on 26 February 2019, once again addressed numerous controversies over meaning of the term “beneficial ownership”. The court’s concern in N Luxembourg was qualification for relief from withholding tax…

As we approach the halfway mark between the 2018 IFA conference in Seoul and the 2019 one in London, I want to clear up some issues around “Business” as in stakeholders in tax discussions. Classically these stakeholders are “Government”, “Academia” and “Business” (plus the last 10 years “Civil society”). So, who should “Business” be? Setting…

Transfer pricing cases in India are estimated to account for more than half of the world’s transfer pricing disputes. Prolonged transfer pricing litigation due to overburdened courts and tribunals is a sad reality for many companies doing business in India. The consequence is that a cloud of uncertainty constantly hangs over cross-border, intra-group transactions routinely…

Almost every foreign client I have advised has at some stage told me how complex the Indian Income Tax Act is. And those who follow Indian tax jurisprudence closely know that judicial decisions, in many cases, are doubly complex. Recently, India’s Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT), New Delhi was asked to decide if the tax…

One of the fascinating features of EU law is that no matter how well-established its classics may be, they are revisited over and over again. If you thought you had seen it all about preliminary references, think twice. Always think twice, because you can never be fully sure until the Court’s next judgment. Last week,…

The Tax Court of Canada decision in Alta Energy Luxembourg S.A.R.L. v. The Queen, 2018 TCC 152 (CanLII) on August 22, 2018 may provide useful pointers to the meaning and application of the PPT found in Article 7(1) of the MLI and Article 29(9). A Luxembourg resident company claimed exemption from Canadian income tax under…

The idea for this article came to me after I read a piece published by the International Tax Review with the title “Mexico confirms that US may qualify as a preferential tax regime in light of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act”.[1] Instead of curating a proper blacklist, or a published list of tax havens…