Territorial connection (or its more fashionable name “nexus”) for tax purposes is expressed in a variety of ways in domestic and international legal instruments. Permanent establishment in article 5 of the Model treaties and “fixed base” in article 14 of the UN Model are central concepts in direct tax subject matter jurisdiction. Fixed establishment The…

G E Financial Investments Limited v HMRC [2021] UKFTT 210 (TC)  raised central aspects of the interpretation of double tax treaties. My previous blogs considered the corporate residence  under article 4(1) of the UK-US Double Tax Treaty and the existence of a permanent establishment under article 5(1) of the treaty. The First-tier Tribunal decided that…

The relationship between treaties and domestic tax law ought to be straightforward. The pacta servanda sunt principle expressed in articles 26 and 27 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties itself implies that treaty obligations must be upheld notwithstanding domestic law. A variety of constitutional arrangements around the world mean that there is…

Case law on thepurpose of transactions is starting to develop around the world. Is there a common pattern? Whether a financing structure was a “tax avoidance arrangement”  under  now repealed general anti-avoidance provisions of the New Zealand Income Tax Act 2004  was examined last month by the New Zealand Court of Appeal in Commissioner of…

Following the Supreme Court decision in Fowler v HMRC [2020] UKSC 22, the UK First-tier Tribunal has considered another case where classification of a source of income for tax treaty purposes was in issue. This time the question was classification as business profit or income from immovable property in the Canada-UK double tax treaty. In…

With a judgment rendered on 16 December 2019 (case no. 2C_209/2017), the Swiss Federal Supreme Court (“FSC”) rejected several reclaims of Swiss dividend withholding taxes made by a Luxembourg resident financial institution (“Lux Bank”) and thereby denied the claimant the benefits of the double taxation treaty between Switzerland and Luxembourg on income and capital taxes…

In the 1980s, a new dimension to profit shifting was introduced in the United States through the establishment of Onshore Offshore Banks. New legislation (called the International Banking Facility (IBF)) allowed banks in the US to maintain two separate sets of accounts. One set capturing all transactions with residents of USA which would be subject…

It is widely accepted that the United States of America is one of the most litigious countries on earth. As of 2010, US residents spent about 2.2% of their GDP (approximately 310 Billion Dollars) annually on litigation costs[1]. There are more lawyers per capita in the United States that any other country in the world….