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Full-Text Articles in Taxation-Transnational
The Games They Will Play: Tax Games, Roadblocks, And Glitches Under The 2017 Tax Legislation, David Kamin, David Gamage, Ari Glogower, Rebecca Kysar, Darien Shanske, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Lily Batchelder, J. Clifton Fleming, Daniel Hemel, Mitchell Kane, David Miller, Daniel Shaviro, Manoj Viswanathan
The Games They Will Play: Tax Games, Roadblocks, And Glitches Under The 2017 Tax Legislation, David Kamin, David Gamage, Ari Glogower, Rebecca Kysar, Darien Shanske, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Lily Batchelder, J. Clifton Fleming, Daniel Hemel, Mitchell Kane, David Miller, Daniel Shaviro, Manoj Viswanathan
Articles
The 2017 tax legislation brought sweeping changes to the rules for taxing individuals and business, the deductibility of state and local taxes, and the international tax regime. The complex legislation was drafted and passed through a rushed and secretive process intended to limit public comment on one of the most consequential pieces of domestic policy enacted in recent history. This Article is an effort to supply the analysis and deliberation that should have accompanied the bill’s consideration and passage, and describes key problem areas in the new legislation. Many of the new changes fundamentally undermine the integrity of the tax …
Beps, Atap, And The New Tax Dialogue: "A Transatlantic Competition?", Reuven Avi-Yonah, Gianluca Mazzoni
Beps, Atap, And The New Tax Dialogue: "A Transatlantic Competition?", Reuven Avi-Yonah, Gianluca Mazzoni
Articles
Since its launch in 2013, the US actively participated in all aspects of the BEPS project. However, until recently, the general view was that following the conclusion of the BEPS negotiations and the change of Administration the US is stepping back from the BEPS process. While the EU was charging ahead with implementing BEPS through the Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive (ATAD), the US stated that it was already in compliance with all BEPS minimum standards and therefore other than Country-by-Country Reporting (CbCR) it had no further BEPS obligations. The US decided not to sign the Multilateral Instrument (MLI) to implement BEPS …
Problems With Destination-Based Corporate Taxes And The Ryan Blueprint, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Kimberly Clausing
Problems With Destination-Based Corporate Taxes And The Ryan Blueprint, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Kimberly Clausing
Articles
With the election of Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s domination of Congress, House Speaker Paul Ryan’s blueprint for fundamental tax reform requires more careful analysis. The Ryan blueprint combines reduced individual rates with a destination-based cash flow type business tax applicable to all businesses. The destination-based business tax at the center of the blueprint has several major problems: It is incompatible with our WTO obligations, it is incompatible with our tax treaties, and it will not eliminate the problems of income shifting and inversions it is designed to address. In addition, these proposals generate vexing technical problems that are …
Who Invented The Single Tax Principle?: An Essay On The History Of Us Treaty Policy, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Who Invented The Single Tax Principle?: An Essay On The History Of Us Treaty Policy, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
In 1997, I wrote an article on the international tax challenges posed by the then-nascent electronic commerce, in which I suggested that the international tax regime is based on two principles: the benefits principle and the single tax principle. The benefits principle states that active (business) income should be taxed primarily by the country of source, and passive (investment) income should be taxed primarily by the country of residence. This is the famous compromise reached by the four economists at the foundation of the regime in 1923 and is not particularly controversial. It is embodied in every one of the …
Formulary Appointment In The U.S. International Income Tax System: Putting Lipstick On A Pig?, J. Clifton Fleming Jr., Robert J. Peroni, Stephen E. Shay
Formulary Appointment In The U.S. International Income Tax System: Putting Lipstick On A Pig?, J. Clifton Fleming Jr., Robert J. Peroni, Stephen E. Shay
Michigan Journal of International Law
An affiliated corporate group consists of two or more corporations linked by sufficient stock ownership to cause them to function as an economic unit instead of as independent economic actors. Thus, an affiliated corporate group engaged in international business is often referred to as a multinational enterprise (MNE), a term that we will use throughout this Article. When corporate members of an MNE engage in transactions among themselves, the prices they employ (transfer prices) will significantly affect the amount of overall MNE income that is allocated to each member and, hence, to the tax bases of the various countries in …
The Devil In The Details: Reflections On The Camp Draft, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
The Devil In The Details: Reflections On The Camp Draft, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
The discussion draft of the Tax Reform Act of 2014 (TRA 14) released by House Ways and Means Committee Chair Dave Camp, R-Mich., on February 26 represents a major effort for fundamental and far-reaching reform of U.S. tax law. Unfortunately, while many parts of the proposal seem sensible as an effort to bring back the spirit of 1986, the international tax reform proposals are deeply flawed and based on obsolete assumptions of the world that faces U.S. multinationals in 2014.
How Serious Is The Problem Of Base Erosion And Profit Shifting?, James R. Hines Jr.
How Serious Is The Problem Of Base Erosion And Profit Shifting?, James R. Hines Jr.
Articles
In recent years, the problem of base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) by multinational corporations has entered the public consciousness as a potentially important impediment to tax collections. The purpose of this article is to identify the nature of BEPS, consider empirical evidence of its magnitude, and evaluate proposed policy responses. There is considerable evidence that multinational firms arrange their affairs in a tax-sensitive manner, from which it is easy—indeed, perhaps a little too easy—to infer that beps is a serious problem. There are journalistic accounts of apparently spectacular international tax-avoidance schemes used by multinational corporations, though these stories commonly …
Why Y? Reflections On The Baucus Proposal, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Why Y? Reflections On The Baucus Proposal, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
The international tax reform proposal introduced by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., on November 19 contains several significant innovations that promise to define the terms of the debate for the foreseeable political future. (Prior coverage: Tax Notes Int’l, Nov. 25, 2013, p. 691.) It is therefore worth examining in detail even if it seems unlikely that progress toward meaningful reform can be achieved very soon.
Should The Us Dictate World Tax Policy? Reflections On Ppl, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Should The Us Dictate World Tax Policy? Reflections On Ppl, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to grant certiorari in PPL offers it a unique opportunity to change the law regarding foreign tax credits that has significantly impeded the ability of other countries to engage in meaningful tax reform. In 1938 the Court said in dicta that to qualify for the FTC a tax had to be an income or excess profits tax (or a tax imposed in lieu thereof) under U.S. tax principles. This statement has led to an elaborate set of regulations defining what is an income tax, which has significantly hampered the ability of foreign countries to adopt …
Corporate And International Tax Reform: Proposals For The Second Obama Administration (And Beyond), Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Corporate And International Tax Reform: Proposals For The Second Obama Administration (And Beyond), Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
The passage of the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (ATRA) offers an opportune moment to consider proposals for corporate and international tax reform. With the debate over individual tax rates for the income and estate tax settled for the present, the President and Congress are free to consider broader reforms. Few observers doubt that such reforms are sorely needed, for several reasons. First, the long-term budgetary outlook is unsustainable. Second, the U.S. corporate tax rate is the highest in the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). Third, the current system raises relatively little revenue and large amounts of …
Vive La Petite Difference: Camp, Obama, And Territoriality Reconsidered, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Vive La Petite Difference: Camp, Obama, And Territoriality Reconsidered, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
The recent tax reform proposals by House Ways and Means Committee Chair David Camp, R-Mich., and by President Obama seem to offer starkly contrasting visions of how to reform the taxation of foreign-source income earned by U.S.-based multinational enterprises.1 Both acknowledge the problem, which is that U.S.-based MNEs currently have more than $1 trillion of ‘‘permanently reinvested’’ income offshore, which they cannot bring back to the U.S. without incurring a 35 percent tax penalty. However, they seem to offer radically different solutions: Under the Camp proposal, a participation exemption will enable U.S.-based MNEs to bring back the income without paying …
Symposium On International Taxation And Competitiveness: Introduction And Overview, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Nicola Sartori
Symposium On International Taxation And Competitiveness: Introduction And Overview, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Nicola Sartori
Articles
In February, 2012, the Treasury and White House unveiled President Obama's Framework for Business Tax Reform. A major proposal was to abolish the deferral on income earned by foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporations ("CFCs").
Transfer Pricing Disputes In The United States, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Transfer Pricing Disputes In The United States, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Book Chapters
In 1988, the US Treasury Department published a study of inter-company pricing (the 'White Paper') that included the following endorsement of the so-called arm's length standard (ALS) for examining the reasonableness of transactions between related parties for tax purposes: The arm's length standard is embodied in all U.S. tax treaties; it is in each major model treaty, including the U.S. Model Convention; it is incorporated into most tax treaties to which the United States is not a party; it has been explicitly adopted by international organizations that have addressed themselves to transfer pricing issues; and virtually every major industrial nation …
The Tax Revenue Capacity Of The U.S. Economy, James R. Hines Jr.
The Tax Revenue Capacity Of The U.S. Economy, James R. Hines Jr.
Book Chapters
The United States imposes smaller tax burdens than do other large high-income countries, its 24.8 percent ratio of tax collections to GDP in 2010 representing the lowest fraction among the G-7. The United States also differs from other G-7 countries in relying relatively little on expenditure-type taxes. It follows that there is significant unused tax capacity in the United States that could be deployed to pay the country’s debts, but that the most promising source of additional tax revenue is expenditure taxation that is widely perceived to have very different distributional features than the income taxes on which the U.S. …
The Effective Tax Rate Of The Largest Us And Eu Multinationals, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Yaron Lahav
The Effective Tax Rate Of The Largest Us And Eu Multinationals, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Yaron Lahav
Articles
The United States has the second highest statutory corporate tax rate in the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) (after Japan).1 This has not always been the case. After the Tax Reform Act of 1986 lowered the U.S. rate from 46% to 34%,2 the United States had one of the lowest statutory corporate tax rates in the OECD.3 In the past twenty-five years, however, the U.S. rate has remained essentially unchanged (it was raised to 35% in 1993),4 while most other OECD countries reduced their statutory rate so that the OECD average statutory corporate tax rate is 25.1%.
The Case Against Taxing Citizens, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
The Case Against Taxing Citizens, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
The bipartisan tax reform bill recently introduced by Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Judd Gregg, R-N.H., proposes to abolish IRC section 911. That section, which exempts U.S. citizens living overseas from tax on the first $80,000 of earned income, is indeed anomalous in the context of a tax on all income "from whatever source derived," and has been subjected to criticism. However, there is a reason section 911 has been in the code since the 1920s: In its absence, citizenship-based taxation becomes completely unadministrable. Rather than continuing the long argument over section 911, Congress should therefore reexamine the basic premise: …
Between Formulary Apportionment And The Oecd Guidelines: A Proposal For Reconciliation, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Between Formulary Apportionment And The Oecd Guidelines: A Proposal For Reconciliation, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
In the last 30 years, a debate has been raging in international tax circles between advocates of the OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines and the arm’s length standard (ALS) they embody, on the one hand, and advocates of formulary apportionment (FA) on the other. After the adoption of the 1995 regulations and the new OECD Guidelines, the debate became quieter for a while, because everyone was waiting to see whether the issue had been resolved. However, while there have been few decided cases, it is clear by now that the transfer pricing problem is as bad as it ever was. That …
Obama's International Tax Plan: A Major Step Forward, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Obama's International Tax Plan: A Major Step Forward, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
President Barack Obama last week personally introduced a set of proposals to reform U.S. international taxation that are the most significant advance toward preserving the income tax on cross-border transactions since the enactment of the subpart F rules by the Kennedy administration in 1962. (For prior coverage, see Doc 2009-10047 or 2009 TNT 84-1.) In essence, the Obama proposals introduce a 21stcentury version of the vision begun by Thomas Adams in 1918 and continued by Stanley Surrey in 1961: a world in which source and residence taxation are coordinated so as to achieve the underlying goals of the international tax …
Closing The International Tax Gap Via Cooperations, Not Competition, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Closing The International Tax Gap Via Cooperations, Not Competition, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Book Chapters
All three major goals of the Volcker task force — reducing tax evasion and loopholes, simplifying the code, and reducing corporate welfare — can be advanced by focusing on the international aspects of the tax gap. These aspects include both enforcement of existing U.S. law on U.S. residents earning income overseas (the evasion issue) and reforming deferral for U.S.-based multinational enterprises (the avoidance issue). To best advance the task force’s three goals, I would propose a change in each of these two major international areas.
How Globalization Affects Tax Design, James R. Hines Jr., Lawrence H. Summers
How Globalization Affects Tax Design, James R. Hines Jr., Lawrence H. Summers
Articles
The economic changes associated with globalization tighten financial pressures on governments of high-income countries by increasing the demand for government spending while making it more costly to raise tax revenue. Greater international mobility of economic activity, and associated responsiveness of the tax base to tax rates, increases the economic distortions created by taxation. Countries with small open economies have relatively mobile tax bases; as a result, they rely much less heavily on corporate and personal income taxes than do other countries. The evidence indicates that a ten percent smaller population in 1999 is associated with a one percent smaller ratio …
Allocating Business Profits For Tax Purposes: A Proposal To Adopt A Formulary Profit Split, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Kimberly A. Clausing, Michael C. Durst
Allocating Business Profits For Tax Purposes: A Proposal To Adopt A Formulary Profit Split, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Kimberly A. Clausing, Michael C. Durst
Articles
The current system of taxing the income of multinational firms in the United States is flawed across multiple dimensions. The system provides an artificial tax incentive to earn income in low-tax countries, rewards aggressive tax planning, and is not compatible with any common metrics of efficiency. The U.S. system is also notoriously complex; observers are nearly unanimous in lamenting the heavy compliance burdens and the impracticality of coherent enforcement. Further, despite a corporate tax rate one standard deviation above that of other OECD countries, the U.S. corporate tax system raises relatively little revenue, due in part to the shifting of …
Dividend Policy Inside The Multinational Firm, Mihir A. Desai, C. Fritz Foley, James R. Hines Jr.
Dividend Policy Inside The Multinational Firm, Mihir A. Desai, C. Fritz Foley, James R. Hines Jr.
Articles
This paper examines the determinants of profit repatriation policies for US multinational firms. Dividend repatriations are surprisingly persistent and resemble dividend payments to external shareholders. Tax considerations influence dividend repatriations, but not decisively, as differentially-taxed entities feature similar policies and some firms incur avoidable tax penalties. Parent companies requiring cash to fund domestic investments, or to pay dividends to common shareholders, draw on the resources of their foreign affiliates through repatriations. Incompletely controlled affiliates are more likely than others to make regular dividend payments and to trigger avoidable tax costs through repatriations. The results indicate that traditional corporate finance concerns …
Corporate Taxation And International Competition, James R. Hines Jr.
Corporate Taxation And International Competition, James R. Hines Jr.
Book Chapters
Many countries tax corporate income heavily despite the incentives that they face to reduce tax rates in order to attract greater investment, particularly investment from foreign sources. The volume of world foreign direct investment (FDI) has grown enormously since 1980, thereby increasing a country's ability to attract significant levels of new investment by reducing corporate taxation. The evidence indicates, however, that corporate tax collections are remarkably persistent relative to gross domestic product ( GDP), government revenues, or other indicators of underlying economic activity or government need. If this were not true- if corporate income taxation were rapidly disappearing around the …
Commentary, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Commentary, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Book Chapters
David Rosenbloom has delivered an important lecture on an important topic: whether exploiting differences between the tax system of two different jurisdictions to minimize the taxes paid to either or both ("international tax arbitrage") is a problem, and if so, whether anything can be done about it in a world without a "world tax organization." As Rosenbloom states, international tax arbitrage is "the planning focus of the future," and recently has been the focus of considerable discussion and debate (for example, upon the promulgation and subsequent withdrawal under fire of Notice 98-11). Rosenbloom's lecture is one of the first attempts …
Federalism And The Commerce Clause: A Comparative Perspective, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Federalism And The Commerce Clause: A Comparative Perspective, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
The U.S. Supreme Court has on numerous occasions addressed the constitutionality of state taxes under the U.S. Constitution (most often under the Commerce Clause, but sometimes under the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses). In general, the Supreme Court has granted wide leeway to the states to adopt any tax system they wish, only striking down the most egregious cases of discrimination against out-of-state residents. Thus, for example, the Court has generally refused to intervene against state tax competition to attract business into the state. It has twice upheld a method of calculating how much income of a multinational enterprise …
The New United States Model Income Tax Convention, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Martin B. Tittle
The New United States Model Income Tax Convention, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Martin B. Tittle
Articles
On 15 November 2006, the United States Treasury released its long-awaited new Model Income Tax Convention (“New Model”), which replaced the 1996 US Model (“Old Model”). This article reviews some of the major differences between the New and Old Models, as well as some of the major differences between the New Model and the current (2005) OECD Model Tax Convention. The article also discusses some new trends in US treaty policy which are not reflected in the New Model. The article concludes by evaluating the New Model in light of the emerging trend to use tax treaties not just to …
The Three Goals Of Taxation, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
The Three Goals Of Taxation, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
The current debate in the United States about whether the income tax should be replaced with a consumption tax has been waged on the traditional grounds for evaluating tax policy: efficiency, equity, and administrability. For example, Joseph Bankman and David Weisbach recently argued for the superiority of an ideal consumption tax over an ideal income tax on three grounds: First, that the consumption tax is more efficient because it does not discriminate between current and future consumption,' while both income and consumption taxes have identical effect on work effort. Second, that the consumption tax is at least as good at …
The Pitfalls Of International Integration: A Comment On The Bush Proposal And Its Aftermath, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
The Pitfalls Of International Integration: A Comment On The Bush Proposal And Its Aftermath, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
In January 2003, the Bush Administration proposed a new system for taxing corporate dividends, under which domestic shareholders in U.S. corporations would not be taxed on dividends they received, provided the corporation distributed these dividends out of after-tax earnings (the “Bush Proposal”). The Bush Proposal was introduced in Congress on February 27, 2003. Ultimately, however, Congress balked at enacting full-?edged dividend exemption. Instead, in the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 (“JGTRRA”) as enacted on May 28, 2003, a lower rate of 15% was adopted for dividends paid by domestic and certain foreign corporations,1 and the capital …
Risk, Rents, And Regressivity: Why The United States Needs Both An Income Tax And A Vat, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Risk, Rents, And Regressivity: Why The United States Needs Both An Income Tax And A Vat, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
In this article, Prof. Avi-Yonah argues that the legal academic debate about fundamental tax reform from 1974 onward has been skewed by the assumption that a consumption tax must replace the income tax. He addresses three of the major issue in recent writings on the income/consumption tax debate, and shows how none of the arguments in favor of the consumption tax are conclusive. Avi-Yonah also addresses the various consumption tax proposals that have been made and shows that they are all deficient in comparison with a VAT, as well as failing to achieve the goals of an income tax. Finally, …
Fishing For Rainbows, The Fsc Repeal And Extraterritorial Income Exclusion Act, Stuart Smith
Fishing For Rainbows, The Fsc Repeal And Extraterritorial Income Exclusion Act, Stuart Smith
San Diego International Law Journal
On August 30, 2002, the final decision was released in the case of United States-Tax Treatment for "Foreign Sales Corporations". The World Trade Organization arbitration panel report authorizes the European Communities to levy $4.043 billion in annual trade sanctions against imports from the United States because of a provision in the U.S. tax code. "The FSC Repeal and Extraterritorial Income Exclusion Act of 2000", the most recent of 40 years worth of half-hearted attempts by the United States to comply with world trading body regulations, is the current offender. According to the arbitration panel, the act subsidizes foreign sales by …