Law Commons^™

Reimagining A U.S. Corporate Tax Increase As A Supplemental Subtraction Vat, Daniel S. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. federal government raises tax revenue almost exclusively through income taxes, both corporate and individual, whereas its trading partners and competitors rely for their national revenue on both income taxes and “destination-based” value added taxes (VATs), which are not imposed on exports but are imposed on imports. As a result, U.S. corporations, which are subject to U.S. corporate income tax, may be at a serious trade disadvantage to competitor non-U.S. corporations with respect to both U.S. domestic sales and foreign sales, if the U.S. corporate income tax exceeds the foreign country’s income tax imposed on those competitors.

The Biden …

The Canadian Digital Services Tax, Wei Cui

All Faculty Publications

The Digital Services Tax (DST) may never be enacted in Canada. At least that seems to be what most Canadian tax professionals hope for: the draft Digital Services Tax Act (DSTA), released by the federal government in December 2021, has received little meaningful commentary; likely few Canadian taxpayers potentially affected by the DSTA (and their tax advisors) have attempted to learn from experiences of DST compliance in other countries; and the world also has little to learn from Canadian taxpayers’ preparation for a potential DST. This essay highlights three ways in which this collective dismissal of Canada’s proposed DST is …

Beyond The "Made In America Tax Plan": Gilti And International Tax Cooperation's Next Golden Age, Steven Dean

Faculty Scholarship

Tumultuous times can be particularly difficult for the vulnerable. That may be no less true in the international tax context than it is elsewhere, but disruptive change can also open the door to greater participation by, and rewards for, those long treated as outsiders. With international tax cooperation's first golden age receding into history, new priorities have begun to take root. Unprecedented challenges buffet the international tax regime, suggesting that its future may depend less on its capacity to shield businesses from taxation than on its ability to find common ground among very different states.

International tax cooperation has long …

Toward A 21st-Century International Tax Regime, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

The OECD has been struggling to respond to countries that wish to tax large US technology companies on the basis of where their consumers live. The current OECD work program on digitalization is unlikely to produce a stable consensus or prevent countries from following the lead of France, India, Italy and the United Kingdom toward digital services taxes. The United States response should not be to target French, Indian, Italian or British companies for retaliation. Instead, the United States should consider adopting a sales-based formulary apportionment (SFA) solution that would apply to all large enterprises. Such a move is more …

Interest Deductibility And International Taxation In Canada After Beps Action 4, David G. Duff

All Faculty Publications

Among the ways in which multinational enterprises (MNEs) can shift profits from one jurisdiction to another in order to minimize taxes, one of the most simple and widely-employed involves the payment of interest to related parties and third parties. For these reasons, it is not surprising that the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Action Plan on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) identified the deduction of interest and other financial payments as a significant source of BEPS concerns, and that BEPS Action 4 was charged with developing “recommendations regarding best practices in the design of rules to prevent base …

The Superiority Of The Digital Service Tax Over Significant Digital Presence Proposals, Wei Cui

All Faculty Publications

Responding to calls for reallocating taxing rights over multinationals’ profits to reflect the place of user value creation, the OECD recently announced a Program of Work to implement international tax reform. I use the European Commission’s 2018 proposal to introduce the “significant digital presence” concept into income tax treaties as an example of the type of approach the OECD favors, and argue that it is inferior to recently proposed digital services taxes (DSTs). DSTs directly address the question of where profits should be allocated and taxed, while SDP proposals subordinate this vital question to superfluous treaty conventions. Global tax coordination …

International Taxation In An Era Of Digital Disruption: Analyzing The Current Debate, Itai Grinberg

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The “taxation of the digital economy” is currently at the top of the global international tax policymaking agenda. A core claim some European governments are advancing is that user data or user participation in the digital economy justifies a gross tax on digital receipts, new profit attribution criteria, or a special formulary apportionment factor in a future formulary regime targeted specifically at the “digital economy.” Just a couple years ago the OECD undertook an evaluation of whether the digital economy can (or should) be “ring-fenced” as part of the BEPS project, and concluded that it neither can be nor should …

The Digital Services Tax On The Verge Of Implementation, Wei Cui

All Faculty Publications

France enacted the digital services tax (DST) in 2019, and similar legislation is pending in the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, and other countries. The DST can be viewed as a tax on location-specific rent (LSR), and it arguably solves genuinely new problems in international taxation. The author briefly reviews this justification of the DST and further examines the DST design in light of three criticisms. The first criticism is that certain features of the DST render it similar to distortionary import tariffs. The second is that the DST would not be borne by digital platforms but would only be shifted …

International Taxation In An Era Of Digital Disruption: Analyzing The Current Debate, Itai Grinberg

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The “taxation of the digital economy” is currently at the top of the global international tax policymaking agenda. A core claim some European governments are advancing is that user data or user participation in the digital economy justifies a gross tax on digital receipts, new profit attribution criteria, or a special formulary apportionment factor in a future formulary regime targeted specifically at the “digital economy.” Just a couple years ago the OECD undertook an evaluation of whether the digital economy can (or should) be “ring-fenced” as part of the BEPS project, and concluded that it neither can be nor should …

The Digital Services Tax: A Conceptual Defense, Wei Cui

All Faculty Publications

As 2018 nears its end, a digital service tax (DST) seems imminent in Europe, yet elaborations of the DST’s motivations have so far come primarily from the European Commission and the UK Treasury: academic and practitioner commentators remain largely skeptical. This paper offers a new conceptual defense of the DST that is independent of the existing government positions. I argue that a clear case can be made for the DST as a way of taxing location-specific rent earned by digital platforms. While the DST may also be partially motivated by other, potentially conflicting visions for reforming international taxation, such as …

Residence-Based Formulary Apportionment: (In-)Feasibility And Implications, Wei Cui

All Faculty Publications

I examine one way of taxing international corporate income that has not previously been studied, “residence-based formulary apportionment” or RBFA. I first offer a new taxonomy of different ways of taxing corporate income by reference to individual shareholders, and distinguish what I call the “shareholder attribution” approach from integration, pass-through, and other approaches. I then argue that although traditional international legal norms had led international tax design to avoid taxing foreign corporations “unconnected” with the taxing jurisdiction (e.g. foreign corporations earning only foreign income), these legal norms have gone through substantial transformations in recent years. The exercise of jurisdiction over …

Taxation, Competitiveness, And Inversions: A Response To Kleinbard, Michael S. Knoll

All Faculty Scholarship

In this report, I argue that the inversion situation is more nuanced, complex, and ambiguous than Edward D. Kleinbard acknowledges, and I challenge Kleinbard’s claim that U.S. multinationals are on a tax par with their foreign competitors.

Can A Cost Sharing Arrangement Prevent A Tax Shelter Label?, Jeffrey M. Kadet

Articles

In connection with an ongoing effort of the government to examine certain Microsoft documents, the government on October 12, 2016, stated in a filed document that one of the transactions at issue is "unquestionably" a tax shelter for purposes of section 7525. The significance of that is in whether some written communications should be protected from IRS scrutiny by the section 7525 confidentiality privilege that may apply to tax advice between a taxpayer and tax practitioners. Under section 7525(b)(2), written communications will not qualify if they are "in connection with the promotion of the direct or indirect participation of the …

Profit-Shifting Structures: Making Ethical Judgments Objectively, Part 2, Jeffrey M. Kadet, David Koontz

Articles

MNCs and their advisors have seemingly taken ethics out of the mix when considering the profit-shifting tax structures they have so prolifically and enthusiastically implemented over the past several decades. There may be a variety of reasons for this. First, U.S. tax law is a self-assessment system, meaning that in most cases taxpayers compute and pay tax without advance approval of their tax positions from the IRS. No third party technical test or propriety standard has to be passed on the front end for any tax strategy or structure. Second, direct personal benefits accrue to management and advisors from implementing …

The Luxembourg Effect: Patent Boxes And The Limits Of International Cooperation, Lilian V. Faulhaber

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article uses patent boxes, which reduce taxes on income from patents and other IP assets, to illustrate the fact that the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice has a longer reach than has previously been recognized. This article argues that, along with having effects within the European Union, the ECJ’s decisions can also have effects on countries outside of the EU. In the direct tax context, the ECJ’s jurisprudence has hampered the ability of both EU and non-EU countries to police international tax avoidance.

In 2015, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) proposed restrictions on patent …

Profit-Shifting Structures: Making Ethical Judgments Objectively, Part 1, Jeffrey M. Kadet, David Koontz

Articles

MNCs and their advisors have seemingly taken ethics out of the mix when considering the profit-shifting tax structures they have so prolifically and enthusiastically implemented over the past several decades. There may be a variety of reasons for this. First, U.S. tax law is a self-assessment system, meaning that in most cases taxpayers compute and pay tax without advance approval of their tax positions from the IRS. No third party technical test or propriety standard has to be passed on the front end for any tax strategy or structure. Second, direct personal benefits accrue to management and advisors from implementing …

Profit-Shifting Structures And Unexpected Partnership Status, Jeffrey M. Kadet, David Koontz

Articles

Many U.S.- and foreign-based MNCs that have implemented carefully researched tax strategies to reduce their income taxes are coming under increased scrutiny. Most MNC tax strategies involve businesses they conduct worldwide, but which are managed from the U.S. These strategies have several factors in common:

(i) Companies established in tax havens or otherwise structured to attract little if any tax;

(ii) Intercompany agreements placing commercial risk and intangibles in such companies, thereby shifting profits to such companies;

(iii) Conduct of centralized activities and functions in the U.S. (in addition to group senior management), which are integral to and which critically …

Beps - A Primer On Where It Came From And Where It’S Going, Jeffrey M. Kadet

Articles

Governments throughout the world have been losing many billions of dollars of tax revenues from “legal” tax avoidance conducted by many multinational groups (MNEs) through aggressive structuring of operations and transactions that often lack economic reality so as to earn profits that are subjected to zero or low-taxation. The success of this “legal” tax avoidance motivated the G-20 and the OECD to initiate the two-year Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project, which took place from 2013 to 2015.

This discussion of the BEPS project is intended to give the reader an understanding of the project’s origin, its objectives, and …

International Tax Policy: The Counter-Story Presented By The Brics, Kim Brooks

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This chapter focuses on the international tax policy directions of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS). The BRICS countries present something of a counter-story to the narrative that international tax law has harmonized. These five countries, major economic and trade players in the world but not members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), have developed their international tax policy with an eye to the approach suggested by the OECD, but not necessarily in conformity with its strictures. This chapter explores the international tax policy directions of the BRICS jurisdictions under the familiar, broad heads of …

Technological Innovation, International Competition, And The Challenges Of International Income Taxation, Michael J. Graetz, Rachael Doud

Faculty Scholarship

Because of the importance of technological innovation to economic growth, nations strive to stimulate and attract the research and development ("R&D") that leads to that innovation and to make themselves hospitable environments for the holding of intellectual property ("IP"). Tax policies have taken center stage in their efforts to accomplish these goals and to capture a share of the income from technological innovations.

Designing cost-effective methods of supporting technological innovations has, however, become substantially more difficult as the world economy has become more interconnected. Where R&D is performed and where income is earned change in response to the nature and …

Jurisdiction To Tax Corporations, Omri Y. Marian

UF Law Faculty Publications

Corporate tax residence is fundamental to our federal income tax system. Whether a corporation is classified as “domestic” or “foreign” for U.S. federal income tax purposes determines the extent of tax jurisdiction the United States has over the corporation and its affiliates. Unfortunately, tax scholars seem to agree that the concept of corporate tax residence is “meaningless.” Underlying this perception are the ideas that corporations cannot have “real” residence because they are imaginary entities and because taxpayers can easily manipulate corporate tax residence tests. Commentators try to deal with the perceived meaninglessness by either trying to identify a normative basis …

The Meaning Of 'Enterprise,' 'Business' And 'Business Profits' Under Tax Treaties And Eu Tax Law (Canada), Kim Brooks

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This chapter explores the meaning of business as it is used in Canadian income tax law given the four purposes that concept serves.

An Equity-Based, Multilateral Approach For Sourcing Income Among Nations, Fred B. Brown

All Faculty Scholarship

The source of income rules used in the United States and elsewhere in large part establish the contours of tax jurisdiction exercised by countries. The source rules play a vital role in the foreign tax credit system applicable to U.S. persons with foreign investment or business activities. The source rules also play a central role in the United States’ exercise of source taxation over foreign persons with U.S. businesses or investments. Other countries likewise use source rules or their equivalent in applying foreign tax credit or territorial systems to their residents and exercising source taxation over nonresidents.

The current approach …

Business Taxes And International Competitiveness: Understanding How Taxes Can Distort Capital Ownership And Designing A Nondistortive International Tax System, Michael S. Knoll

All Faculty Scholarship

Around the world, policymakers are obsessed with the competitiveness of their domestic companies and domestically based multinational corporations (MNCs). Such concerns frequently influence policy, especially tax policy. In this paper, I develop a theory of how taxes affect the international competitiveness of businesses. I then use that theory to evaluate basic tax policy decisions, such as the choice between residence- and source-based taxation and the level of tax rates, and to understand the impact various provisions in the U.S. Internal Revenue Code are likely to have on the competitiveness of U.S.-based corporations and MNCs.

The Potential Of Multilateral Tax Treaties, Kim Brooks

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This short chapter canvasses alternative possible approaches governments could adopt if they were serious about better coordinating and possibly harmonizing international tax regimes; explores the potential advantages of using multilateral tax treaties; evaluates the CARICOM multilateral double tax treaty; and concludes by urging the pursuit of multilateral and collective solutions to international tax law design.

Cognitive Capture, Parliamentary Parentheses, And The Rise Of Fractional Apportionment, Stanley I. Langbein

Articles

No abstract provided.

The New Poor At Our Gates: Global Justice Implications For International Trade And Tax Law, Ilan Benshalom

Faculty Working Papers

The Article explains why international trade and tax arrangements should advance global wealth redistribution in a world of enhanced economic integration. Despite the indisputable importance of global poverty and inequality, contemporary political philosophy stagnates over the controversy of whether distributive justice obligations should extend beyond the political framework of the nation state. This stagnation results from the difficulty of reconciling liberal impartiality with notions of state sovereignty and accountability. The Article offers an alternative approach that bypasses the controversy of the current debate. It argues that international trade results in relational distributive duties when domestic parties engage in transactions with …

Taxation And The Competitiveness Of Sovereign Wealth Funds: Do Taxes Encourage Sovereign Wealth Funds To Invest In The United States?, Michael S. Knoll

All Faculty Scholarship

Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) control vast amounts of capital and have made and are continuing to make numerous large, high-profile investments in the United States, especially in the financial services industry. Those investments in particular and SWFs in general are highly controversial. There is much discussion of the advantages and disadvantages to the United States of investments by SWFs and there is an intense and ongoing debate over what should be the United States’ policy towards investments by SWFs. In the course of that debate, some critics have called upon the US government to abandon its long-held public position of …

Value In The Eye Of The Beholder: The Valuation Of Intangibles For Transfer Pricing Purposes, Yariv Brauner

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article assesses the desirability of our current, arms' length based, transfer pricing regime by analyzing its theoretical and practical effectiveness in application to transfers of intangibles. A detailed analysis of the practice of valuation of intangibles, which is the key component in the application of this regime, exposes its weaknesses that result in undesirable market incentives. These incentives create a strong bias in favor of large multinational enterprises, yet, even if one favored such bias, it is achieved using an uncontrollable, costly and wasteful legal mechanism. The article particularly criticizes the regime's disregard of the unique characteristics of intangibles …

The Quest To Tax Interest Income: Stages In The Development Of International Taxation, Ilan Benshalom

Faculty Working Papers

The Article offers a new perspective on the way international income tax has developed from its nascency, 85 years ago, to the present day. Its main claim is that, due to the lack of a clear normative tax agenda, trade considerations unduly eroded the income tax base. Such trade considerations highlight the importance of reducing tax obstacles on trade and investment to liberalize and integrate international markets. These considerations penetrated international income tax discourse during the Cold War period, when liberalizing trade was part of a broader western agenda to establish dominance through the liberalization of international markets. The Article …