Ccctb

Preface This book contains the proceedings of the International Tax Conference on the c- th th mon consolidated corporate tax base (CCCTB) that was held in Berlin on 15 – 16 may 2007. The conference was jointly organised by the German Federal Ministry of Finance, the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), Mannheim, and the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law, Munich. More than 250 participants from all over Europe and other regions, scholars, politicians, business people and tax administrators, discussed the Eu- pean Commission’s proposal to establish a CCCTB. Three panels of tax experts evaluated the common tax base with respect to structural elements, consolidation, allocation, international aspects and administration. The conference made clear that the CCCTB has the potential to overcome some of the most intriguing problems of corporate income taxation within the Common Market. Common tax accounting rules substantially reduce compliance and administrative costs. Consolidation of a group’s profits and losses effects cro- border loss compensation which removes a major tax obstacle for European cro- border investment. At the same time, tax planning with respect to financing and transfer pricing is pushed back within the European Union. Moreover, as far as the CCCTB applies, member states are able to remove tax provisions that are targeted at cross border tax evasion and that might be challenged by the jurisdiction of the Eu- pean Court of Justice.

The book is dedicated to the question of how much room for national tax policy Member States of the European Union will be able to maintain in the future. It focuses on the possibilities Member States have and the limits they face, such as the need to finance the welfare state or limits of European and International Law. The research question is looked at from different angles. Economic as well as legal aspects are included.

How does EU law affect Member State corporate tax systems and the cross-border activities of companies? This unique study traces the historical development of EU corporate tax law and provides an in-depth analysis of a number of issues affecting companies, groups of companies and permanent establishments. Existing legislation, soft-law and the case-law of the Court of Justice are examined. The proposed CCCTB Directive and its potential application through enhanced co-operation are also considered. In addition to the tax issues pertaining to direct investment, the author examines the taxation of passive investment income, corporate reorganisations, exit taxes and the restrictive effect of domestic anti-abuse regimes. By doing so, the convergences and divergences arising from the interplay of EU corporate tax law and international tax law, especially the OECD model, are uncovered and highlighted.

This study discusses the impact of the EC Treaty on the recognition of entities in the internal market. The EC Treaty envisages the internal market as an area without internal frontiers in which the free movement of goods, persons, services and capital is ensured in accordance with the provisions of the EC Treaty. One of the key questions discussed in this study is how this rationale reflects the relation between tax laws of Member States and, specifically, the relation between the application of autonomous classification methods by Member States and the free allocation of economic resources in the internal market. This study also contains an examination of how the different approaches to hybrid entities in tax treaties interfere with EC law. This part of the study contains an analysis of how the interrelation between domestic (tax) laws and the approach to classification conflicts under existing bilateral tax treaties relates to EC law.

Since its Company Tax Communication of 2001, the European Commission has been promoting a comprehensive harmonization of corporation taxes within the Internal Market on the basis of consolidation and formulary apportionment of the profits of cross-border enterprises, both in the form of a Home State Taxation (HST) and of the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base. This study assesses whether this approach represents a viable alternative to the arm's length standard currently applied in international tax law. The study comprises four parts. First, a theoretical concept of formulary apportionment is presented, followed by an evaluation of the practical experiences of four jurisdictions (United States, Canada, Switzerland and Germany) with formulary apportionment at the subnational level. Next, a proposal for harmonization on the basis of consolidation and apportionment is developed, and the book concludes with an overall analysis of the merits and drawbacks of the proposed model for harmonization.

Antony Ting presents the first comprehensive comparative study of the tax consolidation regimes adopted in eight countries.

International tax regimes and practices are heavily criticized for failing to fairly levy corporate tax on giant multinational taxpayers in the current globalized and digitalized world. This important and far-seeing book demonstrates how formulary apportionment (FA) – an approach by which a multinational corporation pays each jurisdiction’s corporate tax based on the share of its worldwide income allocated to that jurisdiction – can achieve the much-sought goal of aligning value creation and taxation. The author, through an intensive analysis of the European Union’s (EU’s) Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB) Directive Proposal(s) and comparison to the United States (US’s) formulary apportionment experience, shows how the perceived problems with an FA system can be overcome and lays out the necessary elements for its feasibility. With detailed attention to the debates around formulary apportionment and its theoretical foundations, the book provides a blueprint for rebuilding the normative framework for the EU’s tax reform by clearly analysing the implications of the following and more: theorising public benefits to be represented by taxation; reorganising different economic theories about tax neutrality and tax justice; advancing the comparative legal research methodology to analyse law reform by combining the functional approach and the problem-solving approach; designing the logical formulary apportionment system for digital economy; ensuring the removal of the incentive for multinationals to shift reported income to low-tax locations; reducing the tax system’s complexity and the administrative burden it imposes on firms; eliminating transfer pricing complexity for intra-firm transactions; achieving equal weighting of the sales factor, the labour factor, and the asset factor in the formula; application of ‘destination-based’ rule for attributing the sales factor; and replacing the traditional permanent establishment nexus with a ‘factor presence nexus’. The presentation incorporates extensive comparison between the EU’s formulary apportionment tax reform option and FA systems existing in the United States (US) at state level, including reference to relevant US case law and legislation. As a possible option to address the problem of base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS), formulary apportionment is gaining increasing acceptance and attention. This book will prove invaluable to taxation authorities, tax practitioners, and scholars in its deeply informed and systematic guidance on good practices and prevention of problematic experiences in establishing and implementing an effective and market-neutral FA system.

"When it comes to taxation, administrative costs to the tax authorities and compliance costs to the taxpayers arise. A lot of studies have already been conducted in order to shed more light on such “hidden costs” of taxation. Particularly in the field of transfer pricing, administrative and compliance costs are assumed to be quite high due to the obligation of computing and documenting an arm’s length price for each intra-group-transaction. Apparently, European policy makers have also become aware of this problem since the European Commission’s report released in 2001 (“Company Taxation in the Internal Market”) recommends targeted measures in the short run and comprehensive ones in the long run, crossing the border line of the currently prevailing transfer pricing approach, inter alia in order to combat compliance costs in the field of transfer pricing. Eighteen national reports from countries all over the world and a general report deal with the basics of administrative and compliance costs of taxation in general as well as compliance costs in the field of transfer pricing in particular. The book is completed by three special reports on certain issues. The findings of the reports included is greatly influenced by the discussions on the occasion of the Jean Monnet Conference on this topic which was held in spring 2006 in Rust (Austria) under the academic guidance of the Institute for Austrian and International Tax Law at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration." -- Back cover.