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International Law

2019

University of Michigan Law School

Tax treaties

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If Not Now, When? Us Tax Treaties With Latin America After Tcja, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah May 2019

If Not Now, When? Us Tax Treaties With Latin America After Tcja, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

Since the 1990s, the US tax treaty network has expanded to include most large developing countries. However, there remains a glaring exception: The US only has two tax treaties in Latin America (Mexico and Venezuela), and one pending tax treaty (Chile). The traditional explanation for why the US has no treaty with, for example, Argentina or Brazil is the US refusal since 1957 to grant tax sparing credits to developing countries. Before the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA), this explanation was wrong, because the combination of deferral and cross-crediting meant that tax holidays in a source country …


Does Customary International Tax Law Exist?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah May 2019

Does Customary International Tax Law Exist?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

Customary international law is law that “results from a general and consistent practice of states followed by them from a sense of legal obligation.” “International agreements create law for states parties thereto and may lead to the creation of customary international law when such agreements are intended for adherence by states generally and are in fact widely accepted.” Does customary international law (CIL) exist in tax? There are over 3,000 bilateral tax treaties, and they are about 80% identical to each other, but do they create CIL that binds in the absence of a binding treaty, like for example the …