Law Commons^™

Charitable Giving, Tax Expenditures, And Direct Spending In The United States And The European Union, Lilian Faulhaber

Faculty Scholarship

This Article compares the ways in which the United States and the European Union limit the ability of state-level entities to subsidize their own residents, whether through direct subsidies or through tax expenditures. It uses four recent charitable giving cases decided by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to illustrate the ECJ’s evolving tax expenditure jurisprudence and argues that, while this jurisprudence may suggest a new and promising model for fiscal federalism, it may also have negative social policy implications. It also points out that the court analyzes direct spending and tax expenditures under different rubrics despite their economic equivalence …

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.

Transfer Pricing: Un Practical Manual – China, Richard Thompson Ainsworth, Andrew Shact

Faculty Scholarship

Any contemporary Chinese transfer pricing assessment needs to consider the United Nation (UN) Practical Manual on Transfer Pricing for Developing Countries released in May 2013. In particular, Chapter 10 discusses Country Practices and presents China’s most up to date transfer pricing policy statement.

China is not an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member nor has it formally adopted the OECD’s Transfer Pricing Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and Tax Administrations. Chapter 10 makes it very clear that China is charting a different transfer pricing course in at least nine important areas. China believes that: 1. significant comparability adjustments are …

Back From The Dead: Reviving Transfer Pricing Enforcement, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

The OECD has recently come to recognize that the transfer pricing system does not work as intended. In its report on base erosion and profit shifting 2013 WTD 140-17: Other Administrative Documents, the OECD recognizes that BEPS results in revenue losses that affect all states, especially poorer ones; that systematic tax avoidance by the richest and most powerful companies in the world undermines the general legitimacy of taxation; that it gives MNEs significant competitive advantages over purely domestic firms, resulting in inefficient allocations of investment and major distortions to economic activity; and that it skews the decisions of the MNEs …

The U.S. As Tax Haven? Aiding Developing Countries By Revoking The Revenue Rule, Samuel D. Brunson

Faculty Publications & Other Works

Over the years, many OECD countries, including the United States, have identified tax havens as a significant problem, and have acted to limit the ability of their taxpayers to use tax havens to reduce their taxes. The United States has implemented tax regimes, including subpart F and the passive foreign investment company rules, and disclosure regimes, such as the recently-enacted FATCA rules, to prevent U.S. taxpayers from taking advantage of tax haven jurisdictions.

But the intersection of a number of U.S. tax rules, it turns out, makes the United States an attractive place for foreigners to invest—and hide …

A Model Treaty For The Age Of Beps, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Oz Halabi

Law & Economics Working Papers

The OECD’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project promises to bring about the most fundamental changes in the international tax regime since its inception in the 1920s. The fundamental idea behind the various BEPS projects is that the OECD has fully embraced the idea that double non-taxation can have as deleterious consequences as double taxation and that therefore the various aspects of the current rules that enable multinational enterprises (MNEs) to achieve double non-taxation should be reconsidered.

The BEPS Action Plan, adopted by the OECD in July 2013, sets an ambitious time table for the various items, which are …

Revisiting The Tax Treatment Of Citizens Abroad: Reconciling Principle And Practice, Michael Kirsch

Journal Articles

In an increasingly mobile world, the taxation of citizens living abroad has taken on increased importance. Recent international administrative developments — most notably, the weakening of foreign bank secrecy and expansion of global information sharing norms — have further raised the profile of this issue. While U.S. law traditionally has taxed U.S. citizens living abroad in the same general manner as citizens living in the United States, a number of scholars have proposed abandoning the use of citizenship as a jurisdictional basis to tax. In its place, they would apply residence-based principles — i.e., exercising full taxing rights over U.S. …

What Makes A Dutch Company Dutch? The Evolution Of Us Limitation-On-Benefits Provisions, Patricia A. Brown

Articles

No abstract provided.

Igas Vs. Maatm: Has Tax Bilateralism Outlived Its Usefulness?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Gil Savir

Law & Economics Working Papers

The main concern about the IGAs is that they enshrine the bilateral model of tax information exchange that has dominated the 20th century. Unfortunately, there are good reasons to believe this bilateral model does not work, especially when IGAs are signed with countries like the Cayman Islands who have no interest in reciprocity and every interest in making them not work.

Instead, there is an alternative. In response to the financial crisis and the outrage it caused in Europe about tax evasion by the wealthy, the OECD has proposed a Multilateral Agreement for Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters (MAATM), which …

What The Beps, Yariv Brauner

UF Law Faculty Publications

Unprecedented attention to aggressive international tax planning has shaken the earth under the most powerful players in the world of international tax policy design. The media exposure of what Bloomberg's calls “The Great Corporate Tax Dodge,” combined with the ever-growing discontent of civil society with the magnitude of contribution of the largest multinational enterprises to the society within which they operate, has recently forced the politicians to take action. Leaders of the strongest world economies demanded a revision of the rules of the international tax regime that would generate more revenues for their challenged coffers and would restore public trust …

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 …

Waiting For Perseus: A Sur-Reply To Professors Graetz And Warren, Ruth Mason, Michael S. Knoll

All Faculty Scholarship

This manuscript responds to Income Tax Discrimination: Still Stuck in a Labyrinth of Impossibility by Professors Michael Graetz and Alvin Warren (121 Yale L.J. 1118). In that article, Professors Graetz and Warren challenge many of the arguments we made in our own article entitled, “What is Tax Discrimination?” (121 Yale L.J. 1014). In our earlier article, we set out to accomplish two goals. First, we sought to identify the principle behind the doctrine of tax discrimination as that doctrine is applied by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) and to translate that …