Gaars A Key Element Of Tax Systems In The Post Beps Tax World

General anti-avoidance rules (GAARs) have been a topic of great relevance in practice as well as in academia for decades. In a post-BEPS tax world, with national legislators introducing or tightening GAARs, and with the European Union and OECD suggesting implementation of such rules, the topic seems more important than ever. The aim of this book is to give tax policymakers, tax authorities, tax courts and tax practitioners an idea of the various understandings of and approaches towards tax avoidance in 39 countries.

In October 2016, the European Commission relaunched its plan to harmonize national income tax systems via the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB), perhaps the most ambitious reform of EU tax law ever attempted. This timely book offers an early analysis of this important proposal and its implications, covering issues such as the project’s scope and main elements, international considerations, the relationship with OECD’s base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) initiative, consolidation, and anti-abuse rules. With carefully selected papers first presented at a January 2017 conference hosted by the Amsterdam Centre for Tax Law, this volume focuses on such topics and issues as the following: – ways in which the proposed CCCTB is designed to preserve the competence of Member States to set their own tax rates; – reduction of the administrative burden for multinational companies; – incentives for research and development; – automatic cross-border relief within the EU; – detailed analysis of the proposal’s formula apportionment regime; – proposed new controlled foreign company (CFC) rules; and – interest limitation rule. Because of the commitment of many Member States to keep their corporate income tax systems competitive on a stand-alone basis, the proposed CCCTB is enormously controversial. This book provides authoritative insights into problems likely to arise and discusses the prospects of how the proposal is likely to be implemented. Thus, this book proves to be of immeasurable value to taxation policymakers, practitioners, and academics.

GAARS: the better insight into a country’s tax system In a post-BEPS tax world and in times of an ever-increasing need for tax revenue, policy-makers are more willing than ever to tighten or adopt General Anti-Avoidance Rules (GAARs). A GAAR is typically a broad principle-based rule trying to establish the borderline between “abuse” and “use” of a law, thereby addressing the phenomenon that as long as there have been taxes, persons have been trying to reduce their tax bills. This award-winning book compares the GAARs and judicial anti-avoidance approaches of Germany, the UK and the EU. It gives a deep insight into the predominant legal traditions of the Western World, comprehensively analyses case-law and offers unique perspectives on tax law across jurisdictions. This book reveals that there is no other feature of tax law that provides a better insight into a country’s tax system than its anti-avoidance rules. GAARs and their historical background reveal so much about judicial perspectives on taxation and legal interpretation, citizens’ tax morale, drafters’ inclinations for technical or principled drafting or legislators’ willingness to confront politically sensitive issues. Understanding the role of GAARs ultimately also reveals whether they are a suitable means to counteract tax avoidance effectively. The Book is the winner of the Wolfgang Gassner-Wissenschaftspreis 2016!

An in-depth analysis of the specific aspects of justice, equality and tax law "Justice, Equality and Tax Law" is a topic that is both old and new at the same time. Even if the society changes, the demands that tax needs to be just and equal seem to be immutable. What changes, of course, is the perception of the content of those demands. International taxation post-BEPS has been fraught with new challenges that warranted urgent responses. These challenges were mainly provoked by the unprecedented rise of the digital economy which truly marked a change in the way business is conducted, how value is created, and how goods and services are produced and consumed. Digitalization, in turn, had repercussions on all aspects of taxation - direct taxation, indirect taxation, and even tax procedures. For instance, the quest for more justice and equality in profit taxes was the reason why, in October 2021, a historical deal based on a two-pillar solution to address the tax challenges arising from the digitalization of the economy was negotiated within the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting and agreed upon by 137 member countries. It was also the motive behind the shift from a typical vendor collection model to an intermediary collection model supported by centralized registration points in indirect taxes, notably the VAT/GST. Abundant data from the European Union or the OECD signalized an ever-increasing gap between expected VAT revenues and VAT actually collected, making it obvious that the classical system of VAT/GST collection was unable to respond to challenges posed by the digital economy. Therefore, new solutions based on the participation of digital platforms as intermediaries had been introduced. Finally, new technologies, such as blockchain, paved new avenues in enhancing tax compliance. In this context, this volume entitled "Justice, Equality, and Tax Law" contains not only a selection of the best master ́s theses of the full-time LL.M. programme in 2021/2022 but also represents an in-depth analysis of various aspects of this evergreen topic.

In this fresh, objective, and non-argumentative volume in the Elements of International Law series, Peter Hongler combines a comprehensive overview of the technical content of the international tax law regime with an assessment of its crucial relationship to wider international law. Beginning with an assessment of legal principles and foundations, the book considers key general principles, treaty based regimes, and regional integration in tax matters. In the second half of the work Hongler places international tax law in the context of its wider relationships with human rights law, and trade and investment law. He concludes by considering major legal successes and failures and what might be done to address these.

As the struggle to combat tax abuse and tax avoidance gains momentum, ways of making a tax jurisdiction ‘manipulation-proof’ continue to proliferate, from new or revised provisions in model tax treaties to a dramatic increase in the number and variety of anti-abuse and anti-avoidance rules at all levels of government. These measures interact with national tax systems, general anti-abuse clauses and tax treaties. The conflicts and other legal difficulties that inevitably result deserve intensive scrutiny. This book provides an in-depth analysis of current issues concerning the relations of various anti-abuse rules to each other and their impact on the application of tax treaties. The topics include the following: domestic general anti-avoidance rules (GAARs); domestic specific anti-avoidance rules (SAARs) (including controlled foreign company rules); minimum holding periods; indirect transfers of immovable property, shares, and rights; limitation on benefits; residence criteria in tax treaties; tax treatment of sportspersons and entertainers; the principal purpose test of Article 29 (9) OECD Model (2017); and influence of European Union Law on tax treaty abuse. The chapters are revised and expanded versions of papers presented at the 30th Viennese Symposium on International Tax Law held on 12 June 2023 at Vienna University of Economics and Business. Each author offers an in-depth analysis of a particular topic, drawing on the most recent scientific research. This is the only book available to offer such a wide-ranging, detailed, and practical analysis of how the full range of anti-abuse rules interacts with tax treaties. It will prove of immeasurable value to practitioners and law firms active in tax planning, tax consultants, academics and researchers in international tax law and counsel for companies involved in international business.

A broad, accessible, evidence-based analysis of tax law and how democratic tax states are confronting today's global digital challenges.

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.