Organisation for Economic and Commercial Development.
In 2017, Brazil sent a formal request to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (“OECD”) to become one of its members. It seems that this decision — made by the economic team of former president Michel Temer — was not preceded by relevant discussions with areas potentially impacted by the occasional accession of the…
May linking rules related to hybrid financial instruments be incompatible with the EU Fundamental freedoms? And with Article 24 (4) OECD MC? What about treaty override? It is no secret that hybrid financial instruments (HFIs) serve actual business and legal purposes by allowing investors and issuers to better meet their economic and legal needs from…
On 14 November 2019, AG Kokott released her opinion in Dong Yang Electronics (Case C-547/18), referred to the Court of Justice of European Union (CJEU) by the Regional Administrative Court of Wroclaw (Poland) and concerning the existence of a VAT fixed establishment (FE) of a third-country (Korea) company in an EU Member State (Poland). As AG…
Equality is one of the core values of modern democratic societies. It is no accident that equality featured in opening preamble to the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the first article of both the French Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789 and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights…
The past few years have seen the sensational rise of new models of production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services, which have been synthetically captured under the umbrella definition of “sharing economy”. The ascent of digital platforms – including renowned companies headquartered in the Silicon Valley like Airbnb and Uber, or the French unicorns…
Some four years ago in this blog, I wrote about problems that would start to emerge as exchange of information between tax administrations became more routine and extensive. If nothing else, the number of disputes in this area was bound to increase. See also Exchange of Information: bumps in the road. 2019 has already seen…
Income tax rules are under great pressure internationally, because multinational enterprises, such as Apple, Facebook and McDonald’s, and rich individuals, such as Messi and Ronaldo, avoid or evade taxes. In addition to that, the legitimacy of these rules can be questioned, because the OECD – an organization with limited membership – has set them. Developing…
In my International Taxation class tomorrow (October 10th) we are going to discuss the OECD’s “Unified Approach” released a day earlier on October 9, 2019. Given the keen interest generated by digital taxation and the allocation of profits/losses generated therefrom, I thought it of interest to the Kluwer International Tax readers that I share my…
India recently notified a Protocol that amends the India-China tax treaty and incorporates some of the OECD recommendations put forth as part of its BEPS project. The changes would apply from the 2020 financial year. The Protocol brings about serious changes to the tax treaty in several areas, including limiting treaty abuse, tackling artificial avoidance…
On 10 September Wolters Kluwer organized an interesting discussion on Permanent Establishments. The discussion was led by 3 panelists, Tamara Schwärzler (PwC Switzerland); Arvid A. Skaar (Norwegian lawyer, well known for his standard work on Permanent Establishments) and myself as editor of the Wolters Kluwer PE+ tool. Tamara kicked off the session by discussing Tax…
The OECD Work Programme published in May of this year under the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on BEPS aims to achieve a consensus solution to the problems of taxing the digital economy. The OECD Work Programme is broad in scope and considers radical departures from long established rules for international taxation, for example current transfer pricing…
Globally, countries are making a concerted effort to rein in the direct tax challenges posed by the digital economy. Some of this work is directly inspired by the recommendations set out by the OECD as part of its 15-point Action Plan to tackle base erosion and profit shifting. The Indian government, too, introduced two key…
Two of my recent articles have examined the Australian decision in Commissioner of Taxation v Resource Capital Fund IV LP [2019] FCAFC 51. The articles examine the central question on the source of income earned and the tax classification and entitlement to treaty benefits of investment funds. Real property gains This time I consider two…
On 11 July 2019, the event “Global Transfer Pricing Standard and Brazilian Approach: The Way Forward” took place in Brasilia, in which the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Brazilian Federal Revenue Office (RFB) presented the main discrepancies between the OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines (TPG) and the Brazilian transfer pricing rules, an…
