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…

I would like to use eight to ten posts to discuss the status quo of China’s fiscal and taxation law system and proposals for reform thereto. This first post will discuss the most recent development on PRC Budget Law. State budget is a systematic tool to carry out a country’s laws and policy decisions, balance allocable…

An issue of topical interest for tax administrations in the heat of the BEPS Plan, examining the existence of a PE does not seem to be on the agenda of Brazilian authorities. In a ruling from June, 2014, the Revenue Service confirmed the long-standing Brazilian treaty practice of taxing income from services at source irrespective…

The OECD Joint Working Group on Business Restructurings is, in many respects, the precursor to the OECD BEPS project. Unresolved Business Restructuring issues, particularly in relation to permanent establishments, have appeared on the BEPS agenda. One question asked by the Joint Working Group was: Can an agency PE exist if the arrangements entered into did…

It is well known that the world’s economies have turned into a global economy during the last decades. Moreover, it is nowadays common knowledge – also outside the professional tax community – that states are fighting each other for tax revenue, while multinationals are trying to reduce their tax burden through tax planning that may…

The German, French and Italian finance ministers, in a letter to the Commissioner for Taxation and Customs, Pierre Moscovici, as of November 2014 (Financial Times, December 1, 2014), have urged the European Commission to curb aggressive tax planning, base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) in the EU, mainly caused by the lack of tax harmonization…