Taxation-Transnational Commons^™

What Can The Oecd Learn From The States?, Richard Pomp

Faculty Articles and Papers

In this article, Professor Pomp argues that the OECD should look to the American states for insight into taxing cross-jurisdictional corporations. In the early 20th century, the states had to respond to the challenge of taxing domestic interstate corporations. While these corporations posed no tax problem at the federal level, states had to respond to the reality of corporations shifting profits into neighboring tax havens. They needed a better alternative to federal transfer pricing and sourcing rules. In the 1930’s, some states began combining domestic related entities.

The growth of multinational corporations created new problems for both the states and …

Uniform International Tax Collection And Distribution For Global Development, A Utopian Beps Alternative, Henry Ordower

All Faculty Scholarship

Under the guise of compelling multinational enterprises (MNEs) to pay their fair share of income taxes, the OECD and other multinational agencies have introduced proposals to prevent MNEs from eroding the income tax base of developed economies by continuing to shift income artificially to low or zero tax jurisdictions. Some of the proposals have garnered substantial multinational support, including recent support from the new U.S. presidential administration for a global minimum tax. This Article reviews many of those international proposals. The proposals tend to concentrate the incremental tax revenue from the prevention of base erosion into the treasuries of the …

Treaty Shopping And The New Multilateral Tax Agreement—Is It Business As Usual In Canada?, Catherine Anne Brown, Joseph Bogle

Dalhousie Law Journal

On 1 January 2020 the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Multilateral Convention (MLI) entered into effect for many of Canada’s tax treaties. New provisions introduced by the MLI, specifically the principal purpose test (PPT) and a new preamble, raised concerns that the bar to deny treaty benefits would be substantially lower than the bar previously set by Canada’s General Anti- Avoidance Rule (GAAR). This paper considers how the MLI will impact access to treaty benefits in Canada by applying the new MLI measures to treaty shopping cases previously challenged under the GAAR. The paper concludes that application of …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

The Rapidly Evolving Universe Of Us State Taxation Of Cross-Border Online Sales After South Dakota V Wayfair, Inc., And Its Implications For Australian Businesses, Walter Hellerstein

Scholarly Works

The US Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc. dramatically expanded the subnational states’ power to require remote suppliers to collect taxes on in-bound sales to local consumers by repudiating the pre-existing, judicially created constitutional rule limiting the states’ authority to enforce such collection obligations to those suppliers with an in-state physical presence and replacing it with a ‘nexus’ rule based on ‘economic and virtual contacts’. The state legislatures reacted quickly and almost unanimously to the Wayfair decision by adopting rules imposing sales tax collection obligations on remote suppliers whose sales exceeded specified dollar or transaction thresholds. …

The Oecd Multilateral Tax Instrument: A Model For Reforming The International Investment Regime?, Wolfgang Alschner

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

The international tax and investment regimes display striking similarities. They are both based on thousands of bilateral treaties that follow similar principles but differ in fine print. They each facilitate the free flow of international capital by respectively disciplining fiscal and regulatory host state conduct. Finally, they share common historical foundations and have experienced similar periods of rapid diffusion and deep contestation. Yet, while the international tax regime recently accomplished a sweeping reform to solve a decades-old legitimacy crisis, the investment regime is still grappling with its own legitimacy crisis and reform. In 2018, the multilateral tax instrument (MLI) entered …

It’S All About The Drd, What’S Wrong With Foreign Branches, And A Few Other Things You Should Know About The New International Tax Provisions, Rebecca Rosenberg

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

This Article highlights and analyzes some important points about the new international tax rules. For example, such provisions do not create an entirely territorial system. The partial movement towards territorial objectives is accomplished largely through the new 100% dividends received deduction (DRD) for certain foreign dividends from foreign corporations. However, this new DRD is much more limited in its application than most taxpayers may realize (for example, due to a very long holding period requirement). Even when the DRD potentially applies, taxpayers may attempt to claim foreign tax credits instead.

In addition, some of the new tax provisions show a …

Tax Incentives For Attracting Foreign Direct Investment In Sub-Saharan Africa: A Comparative Study Of Ghana And Kenya, Patrick Ofori

LLM Theses

Developing countries have increasingly resorted to the use of tax incentives to attract FDI, despite existing evidence of the shortcomings of tax incentives. In sub-Saharan Africa, tax incentives are a prominent feature of many investment codes. Sub-Saharan African countries find tax incentives as a means of attracting FDI because there are no viable alternatives per se, and they believe that tax incentives can be structured to ensure that FDI advances socio-economic and technological development. But the reliance on tax incentives at the expense of maximizing domestic tax revenue poses a challenge to sustainable development. This study examines Ghana and Kenya …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Review Of The Proposals For Taxation Of Profits Of Businesses In The Digitalized Economy, Chukwuebuka Stanley Ndibe

Master of Laws Research Papers Repository

The advent of information technology and digitalization has changed and continues to change everyday life, including the manner in which business operations are carried out. Years back, to run a taxi business, you would need to own vehicles and employ drivers. Today, some digitalized businesses are able to operate the same business by just owning a digital interface and related intellectual property rights. This change in the way things are done has significant impact on traditional legal systems. In the realm of tax law, digitalization has impacted on traditional international tax rules including the threshold for allocating taxing rights. In. …

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 …

Fun Tax Facts, Rachana Khandelwal

The Contemporary Tax Journal

No abstract provided.

The Contemporary Tax Journal Volume 8, No. 2 – Summer 2019

The Contemporary Tax Journal

No abstract provided.

Front Matter (Letter From The Editor, Masthead, Etc.)

The Contemporary Tax Journal

No abstract provided.

Summaries From The 34th Annual High Tech Tax Institute, Amy Yue Cpa, Langzun Li, Rachana Khandelwal, Nam Nguyen

The Contemporary Tax Journal

No abstract provided.

Summaries Of The 7th Annual Irs Sjsu Small Business Tax Institute, Chen Chen, Liwei Bi, Surbhi Doshi

The Contemporary Tax Journal

No abstract provided.

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

Articles

The international tax regime is almost a century old, and it is showing its age. In recent decades, the regime could be maintained despite increasing evidence that some of its key components, such as the arm’s-length standard or permanent establishment threshold, were unfit for a 21st-century economy. However, starting with the U.K. diverted profits tax (2015), Australia’s multinational anti-tax-avoidance law (2015), and India’s equalization levy (2016), it has become clear that many countries are unwilling to live with a situation in which large U.S. technology companies (such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Netflix) earn billions in profits by exploiting …

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 …

Stabilizing “Pillar One”: Corporate Profit Reallocation In An Uncertain Environment, Itai Grinberg

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This paper is about how the world reestablishes international tax order.

The paper focuses on the OECD’s work on profit reallocation and asks whether this multilateral effort can be successful in stabilizing the international tax system. The analysis centers on the current leading concepts for reallocating profit among jurisdictions under what is known as “Pillar One” of the OECD work programme. To analyze whether any Pillar One concept can be turned into a stable multilateral regime, it is necessary to specify certain elements of what a proposal to reallocate profits might entail. Accordingly, this paper sets out two strawman proposals. …

India's New Profit Attribution Proposal And The Arm's-Length Standard, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Ajitesh Kir

Articles

A recent Indian public consultation document on amending India’s rules for profit attribution to permanent establishments represents the first time a national government has proposed abandoning the arm’s-length standard. In this article, the authors discuss that document, as well as the OECD’s recent consideration of using formulas to allocate profits to market jurisdictions, and they ponder whether those developments indicate a larger movement away from the arm’s-length standard in favor of a unitary tax system.

Amazon Goldcrest Project And The Relevance Of Comparability Analysis Under The Arm's Length Principle, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

The arm’s length principle, which has long been the guiding rule in the area of transfer pricing, in recent years is increasingly challenged. One of the focus points of discussion is the comparability analysis of intra-group and independent transactions. Especially intangibles do not lend themselves to such analysis, because they are unique in a way that does not match with existent market equilibria. The analysis of the Amazon case in this article reflects this argument.

United States Policy And The Taxation Of International Intangible Income, Stanley I. Langbein

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

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 …

Taxation Of Cryptocurrency Hard Forks, Rachana Khandelwal

The Contemporary Tax Journal

No abstract provided.

The Contemporary Tax Journal’S Interview With Eileen Marshall, Rani Vaishnavi Kothapalli

The Contemporary Tax Journal

No abstract provided.

Tax Treaties And Special Considerations For Unemployment Income, Foreign Students, And Academic Employees, Inna Ostrovsky

The Contemporary Tax Journal

No abstract provided.

The Contemporary Tax Journal Volume 8, No. 1 – Winter 2019

The Contemporary Tax Journal

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Games They Will Play: Tax Games, Roadblocks, And Glitches Under The 2017 Tax Legislation, David Kamin, David Gamage, Ari Glogower, Rebecca Kysar, Darien Shanske, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Lily Batchelder, J. Clifton Fleming, Daniel Hemel, Mitchell Kane, David Miller, Daniel Shaviro, Manoj Viswanathan

Articles

The 2017 tax legislation brought sweeping changes to the rules for taxing individuals and business, the deductibility of state and local taxes, and the international tax regime. The complex legislation was drafted and passed through a rushed and secretive process intended to limit public comment on one of the most consequential pieces of domestic policy enacted in recent history. This Article is an effort to supply the analysis and deliberation that should have accompanied the bill’s consideration and passage, and describes key problem areas in the new legislation. Many of the new changes fundamentally undermine the integrity of the tax …

Beps, Atap And The New Tax Dialogue: A Transatlantic Competition?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Gianluca Mazzoni

Book Chapters

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TRA17) signed into law by President Trump on 22 December 2017 contains multiple provisions that incorporate the principles of the OECD/G20 Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Action Plan (BEPS) into domestic US tax law. Together with the changes in the 2016 US Model Tax Treaty, 1 these provisions mean that the United States is following the European Union in implementing BEPS and particularly its underlying principle, the single tax principle (all income should be subject to tax once at the rate derived from the benefits principle, i.e., active income at a minimum source tax …