2019

The Court of Justice of the European Union has published the reference for a case (C-749/18) onwhether Luxembourg tax integration rules applicable to multinational corporate groups infringe upon the EU freedom of establishment.

U.K.-based Cairn Energy PLC's claims brought under the India-U.K. bilateral investment treaty over a retroactive tax dispute likelywon't be resolved until late 2019.

A new IMF policy paper says many proposals for taxation of the digital economy fail to adequately address profit shifting and tax competition ÔøΩ concerns that it says persist despite the OECD's base erosion and profit-shifting project.

Anticipation is building as stakeholders, including businesses, academics, and civil society organizations, prepare to speak at the OECD's public consultation on the tax challenges of the digital economy.

In this article, the author examines allegations by European finance ministers that the deduction for foreign-derived intangible income violates thewTO rules, and he explainswhy ÔøΩ based on the eligibility requirements of section 250 and the scope of thewTO subsidy disciplines ÔøΩ those concerns are misplaced.

Robert Goulder critiques Open, the latest offering from Kimberly Clausing,which argues against protectionist trade policies and for stricter rules on corporate profit-shifting.

The Kansas House has amended and passed a comprehensive tax bill thatwould exempt global intangible low-taxed income from state taxation and impose sales tax collection obligations on remote sellers.

With the recently proposed U.S. foreign tax credit regulations prompting calls for an update, Treasury and the IRS are consideringwhether to issue proposed regulations on the allocation of research and experimentation expenses.

Government officials from the United States, France, and Italy are optimistic that OECD negotiations concerning the tax challenges of digitalizationwill ultimately lead to an international consensus on new principles for allocating taxing rights.

The European Commission has opened an in-depth state aid investigation into a ruling allowing a Finnish multinational group's Luxembourg financing subsidiary to deduct "fictitious interest payments" associatedwith interest-free intragroup loans.

EU member states have unanimously rejected the European Commission's expanded blacklist of 23 jurisdictionswith deficient safeguards against money laundering and terrorist financing.

The Romanian presidency of the EU Council conceded March 1 that "all possibilities to make progress" at the technical level on its digital advertising tax (DAT) proposal have been exploredwithout success.

Treasury may not be done offering relief from one of the most high-stakes issues under the global intangible low-taxed income provision.

The IRS released an international practice unit that provides a general explanation of the process for competent authority requests made to the U.S. competent authority under a mutual agreement procedure article representative of most U.S. income tax treaties.

No-tax countrieswill probably have to beef up their administrative resources to enforce the OECD's substantial activities requirements, according to a tax practitioner.

The Ninth Circuit's forthcoming decision in Altera may decide the fate of thewave of new challenges to the transfer pricing regulations that followed the release of the Tax Court's 2015 decision.

The IRS is not backing down from its disqualified imported mismatch rule under its proposed anti-hybrid regs, defending the rule as necessary.

U.S. Treasury officials' goal in moving forwardwith negotiations on new approaches for taxing the digital economy is to reach international consensus on standards that can regulatewhat many countries are already doing.

Although Treasury expects to issue final global intangible low-taxed income regulations by this summer, basis adjustment rules for the use of tested losseswill come in a later round of regs.

U.S. tax law maintains a unique and valuable tax exemption for certain sovereignwealth fund (SWF) income. The exemption can be traced to U.S. allegiance to sovereign immunity, and it is uniquewithin the international tax community.

In news analysis, Nana Ama Sarfo looks at corporate responses to the U.K.'s tax strategy disclosure requirement and how they fit into broader tax transparency trends.

The European Commission has opened an investigation to examinewhether tax rulings by Luxembourg amounted to state aid for Finnish food and drink packaging company Huhtamaki, it said on Thursday.

Research and development tax benefits require technological risk and advancement, but not necessarily a successful project, according to a recent judgment from the Canadian Tax Court.

India's direct and indirect tax regimeswill continue undergoing changes to advance the ease of doing business in the country, according to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

The OECD's call for input on approaches to solve the tax challenges of the digital economy elicited more than 100 submissions from a range of stakeholders that raised flags about the four options under consideration.

The following reportwas published in November 2018 by the Council on Economic Policies (CEP) as Discussion Note 2018/3.

U.S. companies deciding to invest domestically offer signs that tax provisions benefiting U.S. exporters areworking as intended, but countervailing factors still frustrate decisions to bring intellectual property home.

France plans to require large internet companies to start paying a temporary 3 percent digital services tax in October.

France movedwednesday to impose a 3 percent tax on Google, Apple, Facebook and other tech giants in a bid to advance an international agreement to clamp down on corporate tax avoidance.

The IRS has scheduled a March 25 public hearing on proposed regulations (REG-104259-18) that provide guidance on the tax on base erosion payments of corporationswith substantial gross receipts that make payments to foreign related parties and on the applicable reporting requirements. Discussion topic outlines are due by March 15.

The European Commission's blacklist of 23 jurisdictionswith insufficient money laundering and terrorist financing controls has been metwith fierce resistance from EU Council member states, according to EU Justice Commissioner Věra Jourová.

Citing the need to remain competitive, the government of Luxembourg has proposed a 1 percentage point reduction in the corporate tax rate and a more flexible interest expense limitation for consolidated corporate groups.

The U.S. Virgin Islands government is urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit to clarify that the commerce clause doesn't extend to unincorporated territories of the United States.

Practitioners are applauding proposed regs on the foreign-derived intangible income provision for taking a comprehensive and reasonable approach, though some details may need to be further explained in final regs.

Recent EU court decisions may have dealt the European Commission a setback in its effort to fight tax competitionwith state aid law, but they avoid ruling on key questions involved in other high-profile cases.

In a February 25 letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig and two Treasury officials, American Citizens Abroad requested relief from the "extensive expansion" of reporting requirements imposed by the revised Form 5471, "Information Return of U.S. Personswith Respect to Certain Foreign Corporations."

China's governmentwill ask the National People's Congress to cut taxes by more than CNY 1.3 trillion (about $194 billion) to stimulate manufacturing, a Ministry of Finance official told China Daily, a state-funded newspaper.

The European Commission is assessing its next steps after a court annulled its decision that Belgium's excess profit tax schemewas illegal state aid, according to EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager.

U.K. legislation that could require the crown dependencies to publish beneficial ownership registers hit a setbackwhen the British government pulled it ahead of a key parliamentary vote, prompting a mixture of outrage and relief.

A ritual among politically obsessedwashingtonians is counting how many times the president of the United States uses a particularword during the State of the Union address. Like a modern-day form of tasseography (the ancient art of reading tea leaves),we presume that verbal repetition conveys insights about the speaker's priorities and ambitions. Democrats sprinkle their remarkswith terms like "healthcare" and "climate change,"while Republicans often favorwords like "defense" and "security."

Individual shareholders of controlled foreign corporationswill be relieved to learn that Treasury and the IRS have determined they are eligible for a 50 percent deduction on global intangible low-taxed income, ending months of speculation.

Spain and Britain have reached an agreement that sets out stricter rules for companies and citizens operating from Gibraltar, a British overseas territorywhich Spain considers a colony.

Ireland collected 3.7 percent more tax in February than in the same month last year, thanks to growth in value-added tax (VAT) receipts and income tax, the finance ministry said on Monday.

Democrats are introducing legislation in the House and Senate on Tuesday to tax financial transactions, as lawmakers in the party examine variousways to raise more revenue. Under the legislation, sales of stocks, bonds and derivativeswould be taxed at a rate 0.1 percent. The taxwould apply to sales made in the U.S. or by U.S. persons, and initial securities issuances and short-term debtwould be exempt.

The IRS isn't giving more consideration to the profit split method than it has in the past, despite a recent announcement about an advance pricing agreementworkbook that tax specialists have read to suggest otherwise, an agency spokesman said Monday.

The Treasury Department proposed the final major international-tax regulation under the 2017 tax law on Monday, outlining how businesses can claim a break related to certain foreign sales.

The Commerce Department reported Thursday that real gross domestic product grew by 3.1% from the fourth quarter of 2017 to the fourth quarter of 2018ÔøΩthe largest rise in 13 years. And last month the Congressional Budget Office reported that even if the current surge in economic growth isn't sustained, the revenue residual from our current strong growth ratewill pay for some 80% of the projected cost of the 2017 tax reform.while these reports reflect only the initial impact of the tax cuts and the deregulatory effort, any objective evaluationwould give the administration's economic program high midterm marks.

The Netherlands tax environment for multinational foreign direct investment (FDI) has been characterized as 'a tax haven' or, perhaps more accurately, as a 'conduit financial centre'. Anyway,with a share of 25% in theworldwide market for tax-driven FDI diversion, the Dutch tax planning industry has become a prominent target of recent OECD and EU anti-avoidance measures. Adaptations in many of the relevant Dutch tax rules are by now underway. The paper aims at the interactions between (a) the making of the relevant tax environment and (b) the rise of a specialized industry for FDI tax planning over the last century.

European Union finance ministers are set to ditch a plan to introduce an EU-wide digital tax nextweek but agree towork on a global reform of the taxation of internet companies, an EU document shows.

European Union states have added 10 jurisdictions to a draft tax haven blacklist, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bermuda, an EU official told Reuters on Tuesday, in a move thatwould triple the number of listed countries.