Introduction The Indian GAAR (Chapter X-A of the Income-tax Act, 1961 [‘the Act’])) was introduced in the Finance Act 2012 and came into effect on April 1, 2017. Prior to the introduction of GAAR, Indian courts have dealt with tax avoidance cases and have developed principals, also referred to as judicial doctrine to combat arrangements…

Part II. The (Toxic) Relationship of BO and GAAR in Light of the Husky Energy case. “[T]he concept of beneficial ownership is a basic principle of income taxation: the beneficial owner of income is the person who should be taxed on the income. [(…)] The concept of beneficial ownership is not a good anti-avoidance rule…

Part I. International treaty autonomous BO-GAAR relationship “[T]he concept of beneficial ownership is a basic principle of income taxation: the beneficial owner of income is the person who should be taxed on the income. [(…)] The concept of beneficial ownership is not a good anti-avoidance rule for dealing with conduit and other tax avoidance arrangements….

In my previous blog I examined the Tax Court of Canada’s analysis of the meaning of beneficial ownership in tax treaties in Husky Energy Inc. v The King, 2023 TCC 167 in relation to stock or securities lending. This post examines the application of the General Anti-Avoidance Rule(GAAR) in Canada to the transactions. The facts…

Notes on the starting of MLI internalization process Background The Multilateral Convention to Implement Tax treaty Related measures to prevent BEPS (the Multilateral BEPS Convention or MLI) [i] rounded up the implementation of the treaty-based final BEPS outcomes in one single document. MLI is aimed at providing a framework that could allow amending existing bilateral…

  On 20 May, 2021 the first Webinar of IFA’s online series “A conversation on International Tax Practice” was held. Chaired by Robert Danon (Chair IFA Permanent Scientific Committee), global experts shared their perspectives on India’s software royalty case and on landmark transfer pricing rulings delivered by Courts in various jurisdictions thereby suggesting alignment and…

Articles 3 and 6 ATAD: a dangerous EU legislative mix In the forthcoming issue of Intertax, I make an in-depth analysis of the issues concerning the partial implementation of the EU GAAR, as enshrined in Article 6 ATAD, by Poland in 2019. One of the main hypotheses is that the combination of Articles 6 and…

When the UK introduced its diverted profits tax, I was telephoned by a lawyer at the US Treasury. He wanted to know whether the “just and reasonable” apportionment of profits, in certain circumstances where DPT applied, was a new development? What did it mean? I was reminded of that discussion this week as a result…

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…

With the General’s Court ruling on July 15, 2020, a first step has been taken in the question whether the Irish government has provided Apple with State Aid. So far, the General Court has ruled that the Commission has not been able to prove that the Irish government has provided State Aid to Apple. The…