The European Implementation of the BEPS Project Action 4 and Its Compatibility with EU Law

The European Implementation of the BEPS Project Action 4 and Its Compatibility with EU Law
Author: S. Pierrée
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2018
Genre:
ISBN:

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This article addresses and criticises the European implementation of Action 4 of the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project of the OECD. The article is divided into four chapters. The first chapter analyses the BEPS project and more specifically its Action 4. The second chapter concerns existing legislation restricting the deductibility of interest expenditure and presents domestic law, European law and treaty law. The third chapter analyses the interest deductibility provision of the Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive (ATAD). The last chapter is focused on the compatibility of interest deductibility limitations with EU law.

Harmful Tax Competition An Emerging Global Issue

Harmful Tax Competition An Emerging Global Issue
Author: OECD
Publisher: OECD Publishing
Total Pages: 82
Release: 1998-05-19
Genre:
ISBN: 9264162941

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Tax competition in the form of harmful tax practices can distort trade and investment patterns, erode national tax bases and shift part of the tax burden onto less mobile tax bases. The Report emphasises that governments must intensify their cooperative actions to curb harmful tax practices.

A Comparison of the OECD BEPS Actions 2, 3 and 4 and the Corresponding EU Anti-tax Avoidance Measures and Their Compatibility with the EU Fundamental Freedoms

A Comparison of the OECD BEPS Actions 2, 3 and 4 and the Corresponding EU Anti-tax Avoidance Measures and Their Compatibility with the EU Fundamental Freedoms
Author: V. Holmia-Junnila
Publisher:
Total Pages: 70
Release: 2016
Genre:
ISBN:

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This thesis aims to provide an overview of any material differences between the OECD base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) Action 2 (neutralising the effects of hybrid mismatch arrangements), Action 3 (designing effective controlled foreign company rules) and Action 4 (limiting base erosion involving interest deductions and other financial payments) on one side and the measures taken by the European Union, in particular articles 4, 7, 8 and 9 of the Anti-Avoidance Directive adopted by the Council on 12 July 2016. The thesis also provides an assessment on the compatibility of these measures with the EU right of free movement.

Reconstructing the Treaty Network - EU Report

Reconstructing the Treaty Network - EU Report
Author: João Félix Pinto Nogueira
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020
Genre:
ISBN:

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This study was drafted as the EU topical report for IFA's general report on the topic reconstructing the treaty network and deals with the intersection of three areas: i) European Union law; ii) the OECD's Base Erosion and Profit Shifting project (BEPS) and its implementation, and; iii) member states' tax treaties between them and with third countries. This study reaches several conclusions.First, it should be noted that the Union's competence under article 115 TFEU not only covers purely internal situations, but the Union can also use its internal competence to specify the treatment of non-EU investors or third-country investments, and it has done so, e.g., in the Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive (ATAD). This has potential impact also on tax treaties between the member states and with third countries: Given the supremacy of EU (secondary) law, domestic law implementing Directives (e.g., the ATAD) might, under certain conditions, arguably take precedence over (pre- and post-accession) tax treaties between the member states, even if that implementation is detrimental to taxpayers and irrespective of whether the specific tax treaty was concluded before or after a provision of a Directive entered into force. As for tax treaties with third countries the TFEU contains a differentiating rule, as article 351 TFEU (ex-article 307 EC) grandfathers (only) member states' treaties with third countries, including tax treaties, that a member state concluded before 1 January 1958 or, for acceding states, before the date of their accession, so that EU law arguably takes precedence over post-accession tax treaties with third countries and, therefore, may directly affect the relevant member state's (but of course not the third country's) tax system.Second, the European Commission has issued various Recommendations with regard to post-BEPS tax treaties of the member states. A 2012 Recommendation "on aggressive tax planning" addressed (also) tax treaty-based double non-taxation and encouraged member states to include an appropriate subject-to-tax clause in their double taxation conventions.The Commission's 2016 Recommendation dealt with the inclusion of a subject-to-tax clause in tax treaties, the definition of "permanent establishments" to prevent their artificial avoidance (article 5 OECD MC) and the use of an EU-compatible Principal Purposes Test (PPT), which refers to "a genuine economic activity" as a carve-out to align the clause with the case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union as regards the abuse of law. Third, the OECD BEPS project has established a (political) minimum standard regarding measures against treaty shopping (article 7 MLI and article 29 OECD MC), and the Limitation on Benefits (LoB) clause in particular raises issues with regard to its compatibility with the EU fundamental freedoms. In particular, LoB clauses are confronted with continuing doubts regarding their compatibility with the freedom of establishment. These concerns have also found expression not only in various documents of the European Commission but also in the BEPS Action 6 Final Report, where the OECD noted that some countries may have "concerns based on EU law that prevent them from adopting the exact wording of the model provisions that are recommended in this report", further specifying those concerns by recognizing "that the LOB rule will need to be adapted to reflect certain constraints or policy choices concerning other aspects of a bilateral tax treaty between two Contracting States" such as "concerns based on EU law". Indeed, the "ownership clauses" in LoB provisions face scrutiny because the company's residence state has agreed to give better conditions to companies held by shareholders resident in its own territory as compared to the ones resident elsewhere in the EU and the EEA. In such circumstances and in light of the Open Skies judgments, LoB clauses could thus be regarded as the immediate source of the discriminatory treatment.It is, however, unclear whether other - objective or subjective - tests in a typical LoB clause make them "EU compatible", and if the source state's perspective might require a different analysis in light of the ECJ's decision in ACT Group Litigation.Fourth, and while the OECD BEPS project has not established a minimum standard with regard to mandatory binding arbitration, the 2017 Tax Dispute Resolution Directive (TDRD) has established a mechanism for binding arbitration with regard to tax "disputes". While the TDRD does not address double taxation outside of a tax treaty context, it is a huge step towards the removal of double taxation caused by diverging interpretation and application of tax treaties between member states.Fifth, the OECD BEPS project has addressed situations of treaty-based non-taxation, which might also raise state aid questions under article 107 TFEU in cases where the misapplication of a tax treaty leads to "white income". While generally "the need to avoid double taxation" would be a basis for a possible justification, it might indeed be asked if a double taxation convention must be interpreted, in light of article 107 TFEU, to not give rise to "white income" (e.g., through an unconditional exemption of untaxed income) or to "overcompensation" (e.g., through a tax sparing credit). That rather extreme path, however, was not (yet) taken by the Commission in the McDonald's case: Indeed, to show selectivity, the Commission attempted merely to prove that Luxembourg had misapplied the applicable tax treaty. It did not rely on the alternative argument that double non-taxation resulting from the application of a tax treaty ipso facto amounts to state aid.

Interpreting European Law in the Light of the BEPS Action Plan

Interpreting European Law in the Light of the BEPS Action Plan
Author: Wolfgang Schoen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020
Genre:
ISBN:

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European Law plays a major role in the implementation of the BEPS Action Plan by Member States of the European Union. How does this influence the interpretation of primary and secondary EU law? On the one hand, recent secondary legislation like the Anti-Tax-Avoidance Directives explicitly aims at a full and coherent introduction of BEPS outcome into European law. But this goal has to be aligned with the liberating forces of the Internal Market which inform the legal basis for directives under Art.115 TFEU. Going further, in some recent judgments, the European Court of Justice has shown a tendency to interpret also long-standing concepts of primary EU law (like the notion of abuse of law) and existing directives (like the Parent Subsidiary Directive or the Interest Royalty Directive) in the light of the BEPS Action Plan. This is hard to defend from a methodological point of view and out of sync with the fundamental policies adopted by the European Treaties.

Action Plan on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting

Action Plan on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting
Author: OECD
Publisher: OECD Publishing
Total Pages: 44
Release: 2013-07-19
Genre:
ISBN: 9264202714

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This action plan, created in response to a request by the G20, identifies a set of domestic and international actions to address the problems of base erosion and profit sharing.

Credit Method Compatibility and Constraints under EU Law

Credit Method Compatibility and Constraints under EU Law
Author: Rita Julien
Publisher: Kluwer Law International B.V.
Total Pages: 520
Release: 2022-01-13
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9403523646

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As European Union (EU) Member States seek to counteract base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) practices while avoiding new obstacles to the EU’s internal market such as double taxation, the credit method, also known as the foreign tax credit, is one of the essential tools in this balancing act, yet it is one that has given rise to various EU law challenges and questions. This invaluable book – the first in-depth study of the EU law constraints on designing the credit method – delineates the EU law boundaries within which the Member States must operate when they implement this method of tax relief. For the first time, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) cases that may affect, directly or indirectly, the credit method and its main components are systematically identified and analysed in order to extract the legal findings and principles that define the contours within which the Member States can manoeuvre when considering EU-compatible approaches to the credit method. To this end, among others, this book offers: an extensive study of the historical legal developments of the credit method; an overview of the key design features of the credit method, considering the optional, variable components, such as the credit limitation (maximum creditable amount), that tailor it to different legal and policy considerations; an analysis of the legal constraints on the key features of the credit method flowing from CJEU case law on the fundamental freedoms, considering the impact of landmark cases and concepts (e.g., Schumacker, neutralization); the EU law implications based on the type of credit method (direct, indirect, imputation) and the feature of the credit method (e.g., credit limitation, credit carryforward); and examples to clearly and concisely illustrate the basic operation of the credit method and some of the main calculation and EU law issues. The author’s doctoral dissertation, on which the book is based, was awarded the Wolfgang Gassner Science Prize 2020 and the European Doctoral Tax Thesis Award 2020. As a timely, comprehensive and practical study of the relationship between the credit method and EU law, this book will be welcomed by lawyers and other professionals working with taxation matters, as well as by tax policymakers and academics in the fields of international and European tax law.

Research Handbook on European Union Taxation Law

Research Handbook on European Union Taxation Law
Author: Christiana HJI Panayi
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 672
Release: 2020-01-31
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1788110846

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Offering a comprehensive exploration of EU taxation law, this engaging Research Handbook investigates the associated legal principles in the context of both direct and indirect taxation. The important issues and debates arising from these general principles are expertly unpicked, with leading scholars examining the status quo as well as setting out a clear agenda for future research.