Duplicate activities? Duplicate services are defined in the 2017 Transfer Pricing Guidelines (TPG) of the OECD as “activities undertaken by one group member that merely duplicate a service that another group member is performing for itself, or that is being performed for such other group member by a third party.” [1] Those activities are expressively…
Denmark accepted all MLI articles dealing with PEs, but what does that actually mean? Reading the MLI itself leaves one somewhat bewildered, being thrown back and forth between a variety of articles and options. Reading the instrument of ratification, does not necessarily help: it tends be a collection of long list of countries with treaty…
In last month’s blog I promised to address the treaty aspects of Davies and Others v HMRC [2020] UKUT 67 (TCC). The case concerned UK resident individuals who each took out a life insurance policy with a Bermuda insurer under which their entitlements were linked to a Mauritian company that developed land in the UK….
A subsidiary can (also) be a fixed establishment (FE) of its parent company under European (EU) VAT, after all. This is the most immediate conclusion as it emerges from the much-awaited decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Dong Yang Electronics (Case C-547/18). With its ruling on 7 May 2020,…
Council Directive (EU) 2018/822 (generally known as DAC 6) expressly provides for reporting obligations concerning cross-border arrangements that present an indication of a potential risk of tax avoidance. The Annex to the Directive lists the hallmarks triggering reporting obligations, which include the category of specific hallmarks concerning transfer pricing (Category E). The first of these…
The OECD’s BEPS 2.0 project is currently navigating turbulent waters partly because of the unexpected Covid19 crisis and its impact on state budgets and the need for additional revenues, and partly because of internal tensions and conflicts within OECD dominant group of industrialized countries, the 140-member-state inclusive framework, and the business community. Disagreements include (but…
We have all become familiar with the expression in the PPT set out in article 7(1) of the MLI and article 29(9) of the 2017 OECD Model where “obtaining that benefit was one of the principal purposes of any arrangement or transaction”. Discerning which is a principal purpose is one of the main challenges in…
Purpose of the blog The purpose of the blog, which is slightly futuristic, is to discuss whether countries will still compete with one another to attract activities in their jurisdiction post-Pillar II implementation. State sovereignty and Tax Competition A sine qua non condition for the existence of international tax competition is the opportunity to transfer capital…
I am currently working on a case that involves questions of huge significance when it comes to related-party transactions and customs valuation. It is always good to begin with a caveat and I have two. The first is that the import in question pertains to the years 2002-2006, when the Indian custom valuation rules were…
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…
The OECD recently issued a paper called: “Resumption of application of substantial activities for no or nominal tax jurisdictions”, which is a quite elaborate way of saying that the OECD going forward will require substance in low or no tax jurisdictions. Their stated reason is “leveling the playing field” between low or no tax jurisdictions…
Tax Issue Under Review On 6 February 2020 (case no. 2C_510/2018), the Swiss Federal Supreme Court rendered a decision on the tax qualification of a pension plan benefit paid from a Swiss pension plan to an individual resident in Thailand, for the purposes of Swiss federal and cantonal withholding taxes on pension benefits paid to…
Many States have incorporated General Anti-Avoidance Rules (GAARs) into their tax laws to prevent tax avoidance; within the EU, a GAAR is even mandatory for corporate taxation since 1 January 2019 (Article 6 of the EU Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive (EU ATAD)). States are recommended in the OECD Model Tax Convention on Income and Capital to…
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…
