United Nations

United Nations

BEPS, MAPs and APAs, OECD, Tax Planning, Tax Treaties, Transfer Pricing, United Nations

(Temple Tax Chambers; King’s College London)/ /Leave a comment

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…

BEPS, Intangibles, OECD, Permanent Establishments, Tax Avoidance, Tax Policy, Tax Treaties, United Nations, Withholding Taxes

(Temple Tax Chambers; King’s College London)/ /Leave a comment

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…

BEPS, OECD, Permanent Establishments, Tax Treaties, United Nations

(Temple Tax Chambers; King’s College London)/ /1 Comment

Interest and penalty regimes place a high premium on correctly identifying the existence of a permanent establishment in the territory of a state. The failure to do so often means that there is no reporting to the tax administration by the foreign enterprise by way of registration or filing of returns. This is particularly true…

BEPS, OECD, Permanent Establishments, Tax Treaties, United Nations

(Temple Tax Chambers; King’s College London)/ /2 Comments

The Spanish National Court has recently ruled (case no. 182/2012) that a Spanish affiliate of Dell that sold Dell computers in Spain under a commissionaire agreement with Dell Ireland constituted a permanent establishment of the Irish group sales company. The decision is in line with earlier Spanish Supreme Court Decisions in Roche Vitamins Europe SA…

BEPS, OECD, Permanent Establishments, Residence, United Nations, Withholding Taxes

(International tax professional)/ /Leave a comment

So what were the other discussions at the UN from 19 to 23 October this year?  One of the main topics is the continuing work on a withholding tax on technical services.  The reason for developing countries is simple: it is a simple, effective way to protect the local tax base and prevent BEPS through…

BEPS, Permanent Establishments, Tax Avoidance, United Nations

(International tax professional)/ /Leave a comment

It is the annual Session of the UN Committee of Experts on International Cooperation in Tax Matters.  This Ad Hoc subsidiary body of the Economic and Social Council of the UN (ECOSOC) is responsible for the UN Model Double Taxation Convention and the Manual for the Negotiation of Bilateral Tax Treaties between Developed and Developing…

OECD, Permanent Establishments, Tax Treaties, United Nations

(Temple Tax Chambers; King’s College London)/ /4 Comments

The services permanent establishment concept is perhaps the most noteworthy contribution to tax treaties provided by the UN model. The tax treaty concluded by South Africa and the United States in 1997, to replace the one terminated during the apartheid era, has provided an opportunity to consider thorny questions of services and permanent establishments. The…

BEPS, OECD, Tax Avoidance, Tax Planning, Tax Policy, Tax Treaties, United Nations

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Part 1 of the Report to G20 Development Working group (DWG) on the impact of BEPS in Low Income countries (LICs), dated July 2014, listed in its Section 6: Other High priority BEPS Issues for developing countries, paragraph c), the topic of base erosion through wasteful tax incentives designed to attract investment, labeling it as…

Tax Avoidance, United Nations

(United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Division on Investment and Enterprise, Geneva)/ /Leave a comment

Co-authored with Hans van den Hurk, Maastricht University, QuanteraGlobal Tax Policy. Note that the authors write in their personal capacity. Policymakers are changing the international tax system to counter tax avoidance by multinationals. Has the potential impact on new investment in jobs, growth and development been assessed? An opinion based on UNCTAD’s World Investment Report…

BEPS, OECD, Permanent Establishments, Tax Avoidance, Tax Policy, Tax Treaties, United Nations

(Temple Tax Chambers; King’s College London)/ /3 Comments

Article 7(1) of the OECD model treaty is perhaps the most important rule regulating the international taxation of business. It sets out the fundamental basis on which businesses are taxed, that is, the state of residence has the primary right to tax with source state entitlement restricted to taxing the profits of permanent establishments. Source…

BEPS, EU/EEA, OECD, Tax Avoidance, Tax Planning, Tax Policy, Transfer Pricing, United Nations

(CORIT advisory)/ /Leave a comment

There are a lot of opinions on multinationals and their tax practices. One conventional perception is that multinationals have a general tax advantage over their domestic competitors as their international operations allow for substantial tax management to minimize the corporate tax burden at group level. A number of tax policy projects are in process and…

OECD, Tax Treaties, United Nations

(Temple Tax Chambers; King’s College London)/ /20 Comments

When internationally mobile workers retire, they look to Art 18 of the OECD Model tax treaty to determine their tax treatment if they are private sector workers. Government workers look to Art 19. What about employees of international organisations? Although international civil servants, they work for no government and are outside Art 19. Commonly, treaties…