Law Commons^™

Taxing Nomads: Reviving Citizenship-Based Taxation For The 21st Century, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

The COVID pandemic and the rise of zooming has increased the ability of many people (primarily the rich) to work remotely. This in turn has led to more people moving to other countries to benefit from the ability to work remotely while enjoying other benefits such as lower housing prices, a more leisurely lifestyle, and in some cases greater political stability. Many Americans have used their newfound freedom to move overseas, e.g., to Italy. They and others like them are the new nomads.

Such a move is not tax motivated because Italy has higher personal tax rates than the US. …

The Elastic Corporate Form In International Law, Julian Arato

Articles

The corporate form is being distorted by international law. Surprisingly, this is occurring in the law of foreign investment, where one would expect the stability and efficiency of corporate formalities to matter most. The main driver is a highly enforceable mode of treaty-based arbitration known as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), which affords foreign investors a private right of action to sue sovereign states. Questions of corporate law come up regularly in ISDS. But when addressing them, tribunals have varied widely in their respect for core formalities. This is undermining the basic relationships among all corporate stakeholders—including shareholders, management, creditors, governments, …

A New Framework For Digital Taxation, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Young Ran (Christine) Kim, Karen Sam

Articles

The international tax regime has wide implications for business, trade, and the international political economy. Under current law, multinational enterprises do not pay their fair share of taxes to market countries where profits are generated because market countries are only allowed to tax companies with a physical presence there. Digital companies, like Google and Amazon, can operate entirely online, thereby avoiding market country taxes. Multinationals can also exploit existing tax rules by shifting their profits to low-tax jurisdictions, thereby avoiding taxes in the residence country where their headquarters are located.

Recently, a global tax deal was reached to tackle these …

The Beat And The Bits: Can The United States Be Sued Over The Beat?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

On December 21, 2020, the government of India announced that it will appeal an arbitration award of $5.6 billion issued in favor of Vodafone PLC by the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in the Hague. The award resulted from the decision of India to impose capital gains tax on Vodafone (as withholding agent) for its acquisition of a Cayman Islands subsidiary from Hutchison, which held the Indian telecommunication assets of the Hong Kong-based Hutchison group. The Indian Supreme Court had decided that no tax was due, but the Indian government passed legislation to overturn that decision retroactively. This, the PCA …

International Law Rules On Treaty Interpretation, Steven R. Ratner

Book Chapters

International law is central to the interpretation of both of the Brexit-related treaties. The TCA explicitly requires the parties and any dispute settlement body to interpret it according to the rules of interpretation of public international law, notably the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT). The WA, and thus the Protocol, by specifying that any of its provisions concerning Union law or concepts must be interpreted in accordance with EU law (including the case law of the CJEU), implies that its many provisions not concerning EU law will need to be interpreted by the default rules of …

First Impressions Of The International Tax Provisions Of Bbb: A Reasonable Compromise., Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

U.S. critics of Pillar 2 of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)/Inclusive Framework (IF) Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) 2.0 project have focused on the impact of the Undertaxed Profits Rule (UTPR) on tax credits such as the ones included in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors and Science (CHIPS) Act. In fact, those credits are unlikely to be affected because they are refundable. But this raises a broader question of why the line between qualifying and non-qualifying credits should be drawn at refundability. This article addresses this question and …

Data Privacy, Human Rights, And Algorithmic Opacity, Sylvia Lu

Fellow, Adjunct, Lecturer, and Research Scholar Works

Decades ago, it was difficult to imagine a reality in which artificial intelligence (AI) could penetrate every corner of our lives to monitor our innermost selves for commercial interests. Within just a few decades, the private sector has seen a wild proliferation of AI systems, many of which are more powerful and penetrating than anticipated. In many cases, AI systems have become “the power behind the throne,” tracking user activities and making fateful decisions through predictive analysis of personal information. Despite the growing power of AI, proprietary algorithmic systems can be technically complex, legally claimed as trade secrets, and managerially …