Taxation-Transnational Commons^™

Responses To Tax Treaty Shopping: A Comparative Evaluation, David G. Duff

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Over the last 40 years, the world has experienced exponential growth in international trade and investment, as well as the number of bilateral tax treaties which now number roughly 3,000. As the globalization of economic activity has greatly increased opportunities for tax avoidance and evasion, so also has the expansion of the international tax treaty network increased opportunities for taxpayers to take advantage of domestic tax rules and bilateral tax treaties by arranging their affairs in ways that reduce taxes otherwise owing or eliminate them altogether. Regarding many of these arrangements as abusive treaty shopping, the OECD and several member …