The speed at which the world around us is changing combined with the novelty of the challenges our societies are faced with, seems to lead our policy makers towards what can be described as panic driven decisions. At this point in time we can with some ease point towards the on-going developments regarding variants of…
The Rwandan Income Tax Act (Law nº 016/2018 of 13/04/2018) gazetted on April 16, 2018 overhauled the Rwandan income tax system with various significant changes. One of the changes introduced by the Rwandan Income Tax Act that gave rise to wide discussion among tax practitioners relates to non-deductible expenses—particularly the restriction imposed on the deductibility…
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…
Introduction Last fortnight, India by way of a Presidential Ordinance unexpectedly unveiled a new corporate tax rate structure. Given that the annual Union Budget exercise was presented in July, the announcement was unscheduled particularly since Ordinance route is rarely resorted for such changes. Nonetheless these changes are in line with the recent spate of measures unveiled…
The General Court of the European Union has issued two awaited rulings in the Starbucks[1] and Fiat[2] cases. The length and the depth of the analysis made by the judges of the General Court should be acknowledged, even if certain key issues are perhaps too rapidly dealt with. Although the Commission lost in Starbucks, the…
While earthlings are grappling with taxation in a digitalised world, a new and important frontier has been opening up somewhat less observed. Commercial exploitation of space has become commonplace and plans for activity beyond our planet more ambitious. At the IFA Permanent Scientific Committee we are always looking ahead to see where cutting-edge tax issues…
In many member states’ tax law, mutual investment funds are relieved from double taxation, i.e. proceeds from investments are taxed only once even though they are earned on two levels: first at the level of the fund, and then at the level of the owners of the fund. The logic behind this is that mutual…
William Byrnes, Texas A&M University School of Law* (33-page draft research available on SSRN) Howdy! Earlier today the General Court of the European Court of Justice (EGC) sided with Starbucks’ transfer pricing analysis of its Dutch coffee roaster, and thus against the European Commission’s approach. Thus, I feel that my transfer pricing research about this…
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…
Nothing changed but the change Despite several changes were introduced to Chapter I and Chapter VI of the 2017 OECD Guidelines on intangibles in accordance with Actions 8-10 BEPS Final Reports to align taxing rights and value creation, those changes were not substantial to permit an application of the ALP that will prevent profit shifting…
Not the Hungarian Constitutional Court but maybe AG Kokott in her forthcoming opinion in the Google Ireland case… Optimistically speaking, the Hungarian Advertisement Tax contributes to a large extent to the enrichment of jurisprudence both in the field of EU law and the law of double tax treaties, as it features a host of discriminatory,…
