Part 1 of the Report to G20 Development Working group (DWG) on the impact of BEPS in Low Income countries (LICs), dated July 2014, listed in its Section 6: Other High priority BEPS Issues for developing countries, paragraph c), the topic of base erosion through wasteful tax incentives designed to attract investment, labeling it as…

This week, the United Kingdom Supreme Court, in a landmark decision, has ruled that a UK resident individual member of a Delaware limited liability company is entitled to credit in the UK for US tax on the profits of the LLC. Anson v Commissioners for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs [2015] UKSC 44 has rejected…

Article 7(1) of the OECD model treaty is perhaps the most important rule regulating the international taxation of business. It sets out the fundamental basis on which businesses are taxed, that is, the state of residence has the primary right to tax with source state entitlement restricted to taxing the profits of permanent establishments. Source…

Action 6 of the BEPS Action plan is aimed at (i) developing Model Treaty provisions and recommendations on the design of domestic tax rules to prevent the granting of treaty benefit in inappropriate circumstances, (ii) clarifying that tax treaties are not intended to be utilized to generate double non-taxation, and (iii) identifying tax policy considerations…

The DTT’s signed by the LATAM countries generally follow the rule included both in the OECD and UN Tax-Convention Models. Article 24 Section 1 states that “nationals of a contracting state shall not be subjected in the other contracting state to any taxation or any requirement connected therewith, which is other or more burdensome than…

There are a lot of opinions on multinationals and their tax practices. One conventional perception is that multinationals have a general tax advantage over their domestic competitors as their international operations allow for substantial tax management to minimize the corporate tax burden at group level. A number of tax policy projects are in process and…

This contribution is aimed at surveying the interaction and reciprocal influence between the OECD-G20 BEPS Action Plan (the BEPS Plan), on one hand, and contemporary tax developments occurred in the Latin American (LATAM) region, particularly those geared to counteract base eroding and profit shifting moves by multinational enterprises (MNEs), on the other. At first glance,…

Tax treaty rules to resolve the dual residence of persons other than individuals have been consistent since the 1963 OECD draft convention. Such dual residence in resolved by Article 4(3) of the OECD and UN Model Treaties in favour of the place of effective management. Only a very few states have noted reservations on this…

The claim for the so-called “single taxation principle”, in spite of its doubtful general acceptance, seems to have been acknowledged by the OECD, which has moved from a position whereby countries should explicitly state the limits of the application of tax treaties in case of abuse, to an opposite view ascertaining that tax treaty protection…

After the first post on BEPS, I decided to go laterally and approach an issue that may resonate to many tax practitioners but unfortunately is not so widely discussed perhaps because of its interdisciplinary impacts – what are the consequences and limits for this “rush” towards massification of tax information data retrieval and exchange. We…

In July 2013, the OECD published its Action Plan on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting, aimed at ensuring the coherence of corporate income taxation at the international level. Action 3 of the Plan stressed the need to address base erosion and profit shifting through CFC rules, since then existing domestic CFC rules do not always…

When internationally mobile workers retire, they look to Art 18 of the OECD Model tax treaty to determine their tax treatment if they are private sector workers. Government workers look to Art 19. What about employees of international organisations? Although international civil servants, they work for no government and are outside Art 19. Commonly, treaties…

I ”grew up” believing that publications of the OECD are the bibles of taxation.  They are scientific master pieces, tell you what to do and, like other holy books, are often open for multiple interpretations.  My multiple contacts with the OECD over several years strongly nuanced that view. First, there were the invitations to congresses:…