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Tax Law

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Evaluating Beps, Reuven Avi-Yonah, Haiyan Xu Aug 2017

Evaluating Beps, Reuven Avi-Yonah, Haiyan Xu

Articles

This article evaluates the recently completed Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project of the G20 and OECD and offers some alternatives for reform.


Evaluating Beps: A Reconsideration Of The Benefits Principle And Proposal For Un Oversight, Reuven Avi-Yonah, Haiyan Xu Jan 2016

Evaluating Beps: A Reconsideration Of The Benefits Principle And Proposal For Un Oversight, Reuven Avi-Yonah, Haiyan Xu

Articles

The Financial Crisis of 2008 and Great Recession that followed have exacerbated income inequality within and between countries. In the aftermath of the economic turbulence, politicians have turned their attention to the twin problems of individual tax evasion and corporate tax avoidance. U.S. legislators enacted the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FACTA), leading to the United States signing a series of Intergovernmental Agreements (IGAs) for the exchange of tax information. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) developed the Multilateral Agreement for Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters (MAATM) and initiated the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project to …


Beyond Territoriality And Deferral: The Promise Of "Managed And Controlled", Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Aug 2011

Beyond Territoriality And Deferral: The Promise Of "Managed And Controlled", Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

In the new version of his Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., once again proposed to modify the definition of residence for domestic corporations (IRC section 7701). Section 103 of the act seeks to: stop companies run from the United States claiming foreign status by treating foreign corporations that are publicly traded or have gross assets of $50 million or more and whose management and control occur primarily in the United States as U.S. domestic corporations for income tax purposes. [Emphasis in original.] This is not a new suggestion. In response to the inversions of the early …


Xilinx Revisited, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Mar 2010

Xilinx Revisited, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

On March 22 the Ninth Circuit released its new opinion in Xilinx v. Commissioner, Doc 2010-6163, 2010 WTD 55-42. 1 As has been expected since the panel withdrew its original opinion, it reversed itself and in a 2-1 opinion held for the taxpayer. The opinion makes it pretty clear why the reversal occurred. It was the result of concentrated pressure by the international tax community and the fact that the government was unwilling to defend the theory on which the panel originally decided the case: that the arm’s-length standard of the section 482 regulations does not apply to cost sharing. …


Xilinx And The Arm's-Length Standard, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Jun 2009

Xilinx And The Arm's-Length Standard, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

On May 7 the Ninth Circuit decided Xilinx v. Commissioner. By a 2-1 majority, the panel reversed the Tax Court and held that costs of employee stock options must be included in the pool of costs subject to a tax-sharing agreement. The Xilinx decision is important for three reasons. First, cost sharing is probably the key element in current transfer pricing law because it is the principal way in which profits from intangibles get shifted from the United States to low-tax jurisdictions. Moreover, informed observers agree that the allocation of income from intangibles is the most important problem in transfer …


Enforcing Dividend Withholding On Derivatives, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Nov 2008

Enforcing Dividend Withholding On Derivatives, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

The United States imposes a 30 percent withholding tax on dividends paid to nonresident aliens. However, this tax is rarely paid by portfolio investors because they can swap into U.S. securities, receiving payments to match both capital gain and dividends. Treasury has ruled that swap payments have an origin in the taxpayer’s residence so there is no withholding obligation on payments that match dividends. The proposal would impose withholding tax on dividend equivalents on the ground that there is no policy justification for a distinction between dividends, substitute dividends under securities lending transaction (which are treated as dividends and are …


Back To The 1930s? The Shaky Case For Exempting Dividends, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Dec 2002

Back To The 1930s? The Shaky Case For Exempting Dividends, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

This article is based in part on the author’s U.S. Branch Report for Subject I of the 2003 Annual Congress of the International Fiscal Association, to be held next year in Sydney, Australia (forthcoming in Cahiers de droit fiscal international, 2003). He would like to thank Emil Sunley for his helpful comments on that earlier version, and Steve Bank, Michael Barr, David Bradford, Michael Graetz, and David Hasen for comments on this version. Special thanks are due to Yoram Keinan for his meticulous work on the EU regimes (see Appendix). All errors are the author’s. In this report, Prof. Avi-Yonah …