Organisation for Economic and Commercial Development.
“Improper and plainly undermines legal certainty and the rule of law.” This is how four U.S. senators – including the Chairman and Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee – recently described the European Commission’s State aid investigation into tax rulings by Member States, including into Ireland’s tax treatment of Apple. Of course the…
1. The Tendency We live in a time where the media, politicians, NGOs and activists increasingly are preoccupied with international tax matters. A simultaneous preoccupation is observed among the OECD, G20, EU countries and most other developed countries alike. This has led to continuously increasing regulatory requirements and strengthened legislation towards companies. The tendency is…
1. The international context: OECD giant steps towards international transparency Last year OECD released its Update on Voluntary Disclosure Programs: A pathway to tax compliance, a renewed edition of the survey published in 2010; the 2015 update was aimed at providing guidance to governments wishing to offer taxpayers the chance to come forward and become…
I recently participated in a seminar on tax & innovation in Naples, my home town where I stay often to arrange personal issues, which has a sparkling start-up community, in an increasingly conducive ecosystem. I was trying to remain engaging for non-tax folks and not sleep them out with tax technical issues, so I structured my short…
In highly dramatic fashion the French tax authorities and IT specialists raided Google’s headquarters and McDonalds. I don’t own Google stock. I’m not in favor of Google’s near monopoly on search (though it has accomplished this by offering a really great product and (free) work tools that make my life much easier). I don’t eat…
This month I will discuss the important topic for the anti-money laundering compliance officer, wherein the AML systems overlap with the requirement for tax compliance, and that tax compliance requirement requires tax self certification from each customer of a financial institution. I will provide insight about five topics: The Panama Papers FATCA and its related…
Massive leaks of information on offshore activity like the Panama Papers illustrate the need for an enhanced global tax cooperation with an improved and deeper interjurisdictional information sharing scheme. In fact, efforts towards reaching a global tax cooperation on obtaining and sharing interjurisdictional information is a longstanding endeavor of the international community, whose origins may…
George Orwell’s parable, Animal Farm, offers insights on political and governmental institutions that bear revisiting from time to time. BEPS Action 6 with the broad title “Prevent treaty abuse” has among its objectives “developing model treaty provisions to prevent the granting of treaty benefits in inappropriate circumstances” and “to clarify that tax treaties are not…
The dust has not settled yet and there is probably much more to come from this and future leaks. Investigations have started, international cooperation will be key and hopefully those that have not respected the law will be punished. Here below a couple of reflections based on what I read/seen/heard these days between one toy…
A critical appraisal of the EU Switch Over Rule and the Indian Equalization Levy At present, it is unavoidable to recognize that the international tax scenario is in transition to a much more inter-nation equitable system, where the national tax base will be better protected against erosion and profit-shifting corporate manipulations than it was in…
The OECD BEPS project was kicked off by the observation that the interaction of domestic tax systems sometimes leads to an overlap, resulting in double taxation as well as gaps, which result in an item of income not being taxed anywhere, thus resulting in so called “double non-taxation”. Co-operation among countries historically addressed double taxation…
That day in November 2012 It was 5 November 2012 when G20 Finance Ministers asked for a report on the root-causes of Base Erosion and Profit Shifting, by their next meeting in February 2013. Meanwhile, the mainstream press and Parliaments around the world had started to focus on the way MNEs manage their tax affairs….
Model tax treaties do matter. The OECD and UN Models constitute precedent books with standard clauses that contracting states can follow or adapt to suit their particular circumstances. The US Model treaty, in contrast, is a statement of intent. The preamble to the revised 2016 US Model Income Tax Convention released by the US Treasury…
(“Every in-house tax department should have their own IT/Financial systems capacity” – JHM, TP Minds London, 2015.) The unexpected benefit from country by reporting (“CbyC”) reporting is that tax departments may learn something about their own groups’ financial systems. What is there to learn? If you are in-house, answer these four questions: 1. Do you…
