In my previous post, I discussed the budget law related reform updates in China. This post continues such discussion by reviewing issues of China’s tax administration and transfer payment systems. Tax Administration and Collection  China’s tax administration and collection system is unique in two ways. First, over 70% of the tax revenue is generated through…

I ”grew up” believing that publications of the OECD are the bibles of taxation.  They are scientific master pieces, tell you what to do and, like other holy books, are often open for multiple interpretations.  My multiple contacts with the OECD over several years strongly nuanced that view. First, there were the invitations to congresses:…

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste”, Rahm Emanuel, Chicago Mayor (and former Obama White House chief-of-staff) Fundamental reforms are always controversial and the G20/OECD hard-pressed Base Erosion Profit Shifting project is no exception to this rule. They shake with presumed principles, they provoke a wide debate, they alarm businesses if they…

The OECD-G20 BEPS Project’s goal is ciclopeous: Making the global tax environment fairer than ever by closing loopholes and adopting rules of international law which would be domesticated simultaneously and uniformly by all participating Nations; and all of that with the aim of making the global enterprise accountable for taxes at source (markets) and home,…

The taxation of MNEs is widely debated. This is even more so with respect to MNE’s tax planning arrangements. Increasingly, however, it seems that politicians and the media are not paying enough attention to facts in the debate. Recently we have witnessed examples in my home country of this tendency. These examples are the reason…

On 11 February 2015 a US District Court found that the US Internal Revenue Service disclosed false tax return information to the Japanese National Tax Administration contrary to the Japan-US tax treaty in Aloe Vera of America Incorporated, et al. v. United States of America (Case No. CV-99-01794-PHX-JAT). The IRS had supplied information showing a…

The OECD Public Discussion Draft on BEPS Action 14 (released on 18 December 2014) covers extensively dispute resolution mechanisms and ways to make them more effective. The subject has grown in importance as Mutual Agreement Procedures (“MAP”) have increased significantly especially on transfer pricing cross border adjustments. In this context, the BEPS Discussion Draft states…

If time allows, I try to contribute to the OECD discussions submitting comments to their draft papers. Last November and December 2014, the OECD came out with several drafts for discussion (this earlier article tries to summarize them briefly). After reading more than 600 pages of documents during the week of Christmas holiday, I decided…

General Introduction From 1 July 2014, U.S. withholding agents have imposed, with very limited exceptions, the new Internal Revenue Code (IRC) Chapter 4 withholding (a.k.a. FATCA) of 30 percent on ‘withholdable’ payments to foreign financial institutions (FFIs) that do not appear on the IRS’ published GIIN list. However, U.S. Treasury delayed the imposition of the…