Treasury recently released its 2015 Transfer Pricing Advance Pricing Agreements Report to Congress, the seventeenth report since the initial 1999 report. Each year, the Treasury APA Report describes the annual experience, structure, and activities of the APMA Program. Treasury also formally released the much discussed new audit/examination protocols that will become effective 1 May 2016. …
What do these two things have in common? Dr. Andrew P. Morriss, Dean & Anthony G. Buzbee Dean’s Endowed Chair, Texas A&M School of Law explains In 1998, seven US heavy-duty diesel engine (HDDE) manufacturers agreed to pay USD83m to settle a suit by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) contending that the HDDE manufacturers had used clever…
After a decade, the Treasury Department issued a new U.S. Model Income Tax Convention (the “2016 Model”), which is the baseline text the Treasury Department uses when it negotiates tax treaties (last updated in 2006). The 2016 Model includes a number of new provisions intended to more effectively implement the Treasury Department’s longstanding policy that…
MNC profit shifting has received major attention over the past few years. Total earnings stockpiled overseas are now reported to be in excess of $2 trillion. One of the authors published a technical tax article in Tax Notes on July 13, 2015, demonstrating that foreign subsidiaries of many MNCs are highly vulnerable to IRS attack using an…
The IRS issued Notice 16-08 announcing that it will extend timelines or modify four elements of FATCA – (1) modify the date for submitting to the IRS the preexisting account certifications required of certain foreign financial institutions (FFIs); (2) specify the period and date for submitting to the IRS the periodic certification of compliance for a registered deemed…
On January 15, 2016, in a joint (bi-partisan) letter of Senate Finance Committee Republicans and Democrats to US Treasury, one that will certainly be of interest to our friends at Wolters Kluwer (a Netherlands parent multinational enterprise), the Senate Finance Committee members encouraged Treasury to use a tit-for-tat strategy against the EU Commission. The letter stated that…
Howdy from Prof. Haydon Perryman and I of Texas A&M University. This month we undertake a 2015 review of FATCA’s GIIN registrations relative to 2014. We also include a chart at the end of this post comparing 2014 and 2015 by IGA type, as well as a monthly breakdown of GIIN registrations since list publication began in…
Starbucks Manufacturing BV (SMBV), based in the Netherlands, is the only coffee roasting company in the Starbucks group in Europe. It sells and distributes roasted coffee and coffee-related products (e.g. cups, packaged food, pastries) to Starbucks outlets in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Read my previous comments on this case post here. The EU…
This month, Haydon Perryman and I review the change over the past year, and the immediate previous three months, for FATCA financial institution registrations. The November 1, 2015 GIIN list contains 177,147 registrations from 226 countries and jurisdictions. Of these November 2015 registrations 84 percent were from Model 1 IGAs that had been either signed or…
Both Starbucks and Fiat represent, if one listened closely to the live press release broadcast, an first salvo by the EU Commission to establish that it has the authority, under a State Aid premise, to step into the shoes of the national revenue authority and re-allocate profits of an enterprise according to the EU Commission’s…
William Byrnes and Haydon Perryman FATCA FFI GIIN List Monthly Update The IRS released the sixteenth FATCA GIIN list of foreign financial institutions (FFIs) that have registered with the IRS through its FATCA portal. The IRS provides these FFIs a Global Intermediary Identification Number (GIIN). The FFI may then use its unique 19 digit GIIN to…
On 18 September 2015 the US Treasury issued Notice 2015-66 which announced that the it intends to amend the regulations under chapter 4 (sections 1471-1474) to extend the period of time that certain transitional rules will apply. Specifically, the amendments will extend: (1) the date upon which withholding on gross proceeds and foreign passthru payments…
This post answers the emails received requesting further information on the US Competent Authority, including statistics, based upon my Kluwer Tax Blog post of 25 August IRS Issues New Competent Authority And Advance Pricing Agreement Procedures. The Office of the United States Competent Authority (USCA) includes both the Advance Pricing and Mutual Agreement (APMA) Program…
Haydon Perryman’s exclamation this month, in the form of the above title, underlies that the FATCA GIIN update as of August 2015 is that there is little to update in terms of new GIINs. From July until August, the GIIN total registration number only moved up to 171,109 from 168,239. Thus, the IRS release of…
