Importance of legal certainty in cross-border scenarios In the context of the EU VAT system, the principle of legal certainty requires that Community legislation must be certain and its application foreseeable by those subject to it. In practice, however, national VAT laws often deviate from the EU VAT Directive due to differences in local interpretation…
The FFI GIIN List Update (Lists from June 1, 2014 through June 1, 2015) On 1 June 2015 the IRS published its thirteenth FATCA GIIN list of “approved FFIs” (a list of the financial firms that have registered on the IRS FATCA portal). Total approved FFIs reached 165,461, and increase of only 2,851 during the…
Co-authored by Luís Eduardo Schoueri and Mateus Calicchio Barbosa Spotlight was shed on transparency by the OECD’s BEPS Plan, where a set of Actions was put forward under the flag of “ensuring transparency while promoting increased certainty and predictability”. The document suggests a “more holistic approach” to the matter, and states that the obtaining of…
Dr. Andrew Morriss, Dean of Texas A&M University School of Law The rapidly shifting world of international financial and tax regulation – from the OECD’s BEPS to FATCA – is reshaping the world. Many of these policies are being adopted without regard to whether they produce net benefits (e.g. revenue in excess of the costs…
1. FBAR Filing Requirement The FBAR refers to Form 114, Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts. The FBAR must be filed annually by a U.S. person that has a financial interest in or signature authority over foreign financial accounts if the aggregate value of the foreign financial accounts exceeds $10,000 at any time during the…
Three significant filing deadlines fall in June, one today and two more on the last day of the month. (1) The 15 June FATCA Form 8938 filing deadline (with the income tax return) with the IRS for a U.S. person who lives abroad and has specified foreign assets of at least $50,000 on the last…
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-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…
