BEPS-Project? CFC rules and transfer pricing? Treaty abuse and dispute resolution? Why bother for such complicated things? Greece has a “perfect” solution against base erosion and profit shifting through cross-border schemes: It is for this purpose that Greece has imposed since March 21st, 2015, an additional condition for the recognition of any expenses payable to…
Action 6 of the BEPS Action plan is aimed at (i) developing Model Treaty provisions and recommendations on the design of domestic tax rules to prevent the granting of treaty benefit in inappropriate circumstances, (ii) clarifying that tax treaties are not intended to be utilized to generate double non-taxation, and (iii) identifying tax policy considerations…
Along the last 15 years, the discussion of tax planning in Brazil evolved significantly, changing from a very formalist approach to an approach that scares taxpayers by its aggressiveness and lack of limits. Changes that have happened without significant change of law. Brazilian doctrine used to defend that transactions should have been analyzed from legal…
The DTT’s signed by the LATAM countries generally follow the rule included both in the OECD and UN Tax-Convention Models. Article 24 Section 1 states that “nationals of a contracting state shall not be subjected in the other contracting state to any taxation or any requirement connected therewith, which is other or more burdensome than…
Whoever thinks that a resident company’s income is protected from taxation in countries where it has no PE, is in for a rude awakening; it is not. The allowance for CFC rules in the OECD Model Convention (hereafter “MC”) commentaries is so all encompassing that it covers far more than just the taxation of a…
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…
Following my latest post on the Court of Justice’s decision in Commission v UK (C-172/13, ECLI:EU:C:2015:50), I want to turn in this comment on the related issue of currency losses, which was recently addressed by Advocate General Kokott in her Opinion in case X AB v Skatteverket (C-686/13, ECLI:EU:C:2015:31). The Advocate General concludes that Member…
This month’s Haydon Perryman and William Byrnes FATCA Update post starts with a tip-of-the-hat to my FATCA and CRS research colleague Haydon Perryman who has just moved to UBS Investment Bank where he will be responsible for global regulatory reporting of FATCA and the CRS. Haydon Perryman summed up the decline in GIIN registration during April:…
This contribution is aimed at surveying the interaction and reciprocal influence between the OECD-G20 BEPS Action Plan (the BEPS Plan), on one hand, and contemporary tax developments occurred in the Latin American (LATAM) region, particularly those geared to counteract base eroding and profit shifting moves by multinational enterprises (MNEs), on the other. At first glance,…
Tax treaty rules to resolve the dual residence of persons other than individuals have been consistent since the 1963 OECD draft convention. Such dual residence in resolved by Article 4(3) of the OECD and UN Model Treaties in favour of the place of effective management. Only a very few states have noted reservations on this…
The ministers signed a Supplementary Agreement (SA) amending the French-German Double Taxation Convention. The SA simplifies the taxation for pensioners by attributing the exclusive taxing right for pension payments from statutory social insurance to the resident state of the beneficiary of these payments. In return Germany and France agreed to mutually sustain the other side’s…
The claim for the so-called “single taxation principle”, in spite of its doubtful general acceptance, seems to have been acknowledged by the OECD, which has moved from a position whereby countries should explicitly state the limits of the application of tax treaties in case of abuse, to an opposite view ascertaining that tax treaty protection…
Reform Path Forward for China’s Tax Law Reform The observation on the current fiscal and tax system helps China to improve and execute a profound tax system to realize goals proposed in The Decision as well as tackling new challenges arising therefrom. Fiscal and tax policies do not stand alone and must follow the…
GIIN Lists Analysis: June 2014 through April 2015 April’s global GIIN registrations, like March, were unimpressive. Financial institution GIIN total registrations ticked up from an unimpressive 2,479 additional ones in March to 3,734 in April, bringing the ultimate GIIN count to 160,010 from the March result of 156,276. The 112 IGA signatories, and IGA agreements…
