Policies about taxation, typically at a macro economic scale.
On 21 March, the European Commission will publish a proposal for a two-fold strategy to reform the taxation of digital companies like Google and Facebook. The most recent draft of the proposal that has been distributed on March 15 suggests that one should lower one’s expectations. Last autumn, a group of EU Finance Ministers propelled…
The Spanish Supreme Court recently issued (February 19, Spanish version here) a long awaited judgment confirming that the Spanish inheritance tax legal framework breaches the free movement of capital when taxing non-EU residents on Spanish assets received through inheritance. The origin of this discrimination is the Spanish regional inheritance taxation system, under which Spanish regions…
Non-inclusion of the Swiss-United Kingdom income tax treaty in the list of Covered Tax Agreements of both the states on signing the BEPS MLI on 7 June 2017 surprised some observers. This evident gap between two OECD member countries was quickly filled by a protocol to the Swiss-United Kingdom treaty concluded on 30 November 2017….
On February 1, 2018, Indian Finance Minister presented the country’s latest Budget, which contains an international tax proposal that may not send a positive message to foreign companies doing business with India. The Budget proposes to amend the definition of “business connection” stipulated in Explanation 2 to section 9(1)(i) of the Income Tax (IT) Act…
At the current stage, it is difficult to predict a potential application of the principal purposes test (PPT) and its outcome since it has not entered into force in the 72 Signatories of the Multilateral Convention to Implement Tax Treaty Related Measures to Prevent Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (MLI). However, assuming that this happens…
Among the main issues the BEPS project intends to address is the phenomenon of “double non-taxation”. It is a term that is used quite frequently nowadays; primarily in order to describe situations that are considered as problematic from a policy perspective. However, not all situations where something remains untaxed provoke public outrage. As, for example,…
Much has been said and written globally about Google’s tax affairs. The way the company carries on its business operations and how much tax it pays on income generated from such operations has been a subject of recent, heated debate in both France and the UK. In India too, international tax experts are discussing an…
In mid-November, the Republican majority in the US House of Representatives has passed its version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act bill. Last Saturday, the Senate has followed suit and has cast a 51:49 approval vote on the parallel tax reform bill introduced by its Republican members. Admittedly, it is still not entirely clear…
Recently, a special Mexican Circuit Court (“the Court”) issued a ruling regarding the interpretation of an international convention (the North American Free Trade Agreement or “NAFTA”) which may signal broader guidance for the interpretation of treaties in Mexico. The case was ruled in order to resolve conflicting decisions by two Circuit Courts, as a result…
Taxation of the digital economy featured in discussion on the implementation of the OECD/G20 BEPS action items at the annual conference of the Canadian Tax Foundation in Toronto on 21 November 2017. Several speakers note that no generally accepted solution had been found to address the impact of the digitalisation of the global economy on…
Controlled Foreign Corporation rules are a hot issue in Europe and beyond. Last year, EU countries agreed to have national CFC rules in force by 2019. The Big Four – Germany, France, Italy and Spain – need to make minor changes only to their existing rules. (Like in the accountancy profession, there used to be…
Despite tremendous efforts from OECD/G20 to keep the domestication of BEPS outcomes as smoothly as possible, the current international tax scenario is a rough, somehow agitated transition aimed at reaching a much more inter-nation equitable system where, progressively and within a more or less foreseeable future, the national tax base is expected to be better…
In March I blogged about the first OECD draft guidance on the allocation of profits to commissionaire and other PE’s. Looking at the June OECD draft, further ideas have come up as to why the allocation of profits to absentees is not a good transfer pricing idea. I have great respect for the OECD’s work…
The objective of the EU Merger Directive (“MD”) is to remove tax obstacles to cross-border restructuring operations while safeguarding the financial interests of the Member States.[1] In aligning these two aims, the MD employs a carry-over relief mechanism at both company and shareholder level. Through the carry-over mechanism at shareholder level, laid down in Article…
