Int'l Tax News

In an April 29 letter to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair James E. Risch, R-Idaho, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., a group of companies called for swift action on the bilateral income tax treaties and protocols pending before the committee, noting that such treaties help foster trade and investment and protect U.S. businesses from double taxation.

OECD-led efforts to adapt international tax rules for the digital agewould benefit from more involvement from tech companies, especially if they arewilling to discusswhere they create their value, Denmark's tax minister said.

In this article, the authors discuss the IRS's most recent annual statutory report on advance pricing agreements.

Invigorated by its success in the recent parliamentary elections, the governing Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) is looking for legislative support for its plans to increase taxes by ÔøΩ5.65 billion a year.

The Information Technology Industry Council, adding to prior comments, has requested further relief for the treatment of research and experimentation expenses, such as not allocating or apportioning R&E expenses to the global intangible low-taxed income basket under reg. section 904(d)(1)(A), particularlywhen using the sales method.

Multinational tobacco giant British American Tobacco PLC's aggressive tax planning schemeswill deprive developing countries of an estimated $700 million in tax revenue from 2018 through 2030, according to a Tax Justice Network report.

The U.N. Subcommittee on Environmental Taxation Issues announced that it intends to create a handbookwith recommendations and practical advice on environmental taxation for developing countries.

Ireland has launched its triennial review of the tax credit designed to encourage research and development investment in the country.

The Austrian government has announced awide-ranging set of proposals to lower taxes by ÔøΩ6.5 billion annually, including a reduction in the corporate tax rate from 25 percent to 21 percent by 2023.

In a survey of business executives published on April 30 by Miller & Chevalier Chtd. and the National Foreign Trade Council, 31 percent of respondents said theywant to see further IRS guidance on global intangible low-taxed income, 29 percentwant guidance on the base erosion and anti-abuse tax, and 28 percentwant guidance on the section 163(j) limitation on business interest.

Business executives have little faith that Congresswill pass new tax laws this year, but they hope Treasury and the IRSwill produce more guidance on global intangible low-taxed income and the base erosion and antiabuse tax.

Keeping up and complyingwith the many changeswrought by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in the international tax arena this filing seasonwas a slog for many tax professionals.

The April 16 draft from the German Federal Ministry of Financewould implement European Council Directive 2017/1852,which provides for a mechanism to address tax treaty disputes among EU member states that meets the Action 14 minimum standard set by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's tax base erosion and profit shifting project.

The digital revolution has transformed business models, entire economies and the lives of people around the globe. It has also tested the concept of traditional corporate tax rules, designed largely in the first half of the 20th century. These rules are now unfit for our increasingly digitalized and globalizedworld.

Germany looks set to introduce an economy-wide system of carbon emissions pricing after senior officials from both parties of Berlin's governing coalition reached a consensus on the proposal, the Frankfurter Allgemeine reported on Sunday.

The top two Democratic leaders on Monday told President Trump that any bipartisan infrastructure package needs to take into consideration climate change and include "substantial, new and real revenue" ÔøΩ a preview of the coming fight over tax hikes.

A reported Israeli plan for a digital services tax could provide a sounder basis for taxing multinational groups than previous attempts that relied on permanent establishment arguments or claims the groups are subject to VAT.

Facebook is paying more taxes in France as its operations there grow, and itwill also pay the country's digital services tax, according to Laurent Solly, chief of the company's French unit.

Roiled international relationships aren't disturbing the existing relationships between tax administrators in different countries, according to two top IRS enforcement officials.

A patchwork of partial agreements pertaining to specific types of transactions likelywould not attract international consensus on restructuring the international tax system, according to a U.S. Treasury official.

The U.K. branch of Taxwatch has called on the European Commission to investigate Google for their implementation of a tax avoidance scheme "which uses payments between companies located in two European states in order to avoid paying billions of euros in taxes to European Union countries every year" in their letter to EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager.

Canada's complicated tax system continues to burden taxpayers and governmentswith compliance and administrative costs, according to a study by the Fraser Institute.

Luxembourg's parliament has passed the 2019 budget, confirming a corporate tax rate cut and a more flexible interest expense limitation for consolidated corporate groups in linewith the 2016 EU anti-tax-avoidance directive (ATAD).

This article provides a detailed and structured synthesis of the discussion that took place in the context of the "fireside chat" event held by thewU Global Tax Policy Center at the Institute of Austrian and International Tax Law on December 17, 2018, atwhich Hellersteinwas the guest speaker. The eventwas one of the initiatives of the Digital Economy Tax Network, a multi-stakeholder forum,which organized aworkshop on the VAT/goods and services tax and the digital economy December 17-18, 2018, in Vienna.

Mindy Herzfeld describes debates about corporate taxes andwhether multinationals pay their fair share, focusing on recent legislative, business, and academic contributions.

The Manitoban government has decided to take legal action against the federal government's carbon tax, claiming that itwas unconstitutionally enforced since the province had created its own plan.

An appeals court has upheld a 2017 decision by a lower court that Google Ireland Ltd. did not have a permanent establishment in France based on activities performed by Google France.

An opportunity to reallocate global taxing rights and introduce a minimum corporate tax rate is upon us, and it may be the OECD's last chance to prove itself, according to the Tax Justice Network.

Neither territoriality nor freedom of establishment require an exemption from the United Kingdom's controlled foreign company regime for intragroup financing profitwhen the significant people functions take place domestically, according to the European Commission.

For a long time, Ireland has used taxes to aggressively attract incoming investment. Now this strategy is being questioned.

French President Emmanuel Macron announced tax cuts for middle-classworkers and plans for a more representative parliament Thursday as part of a promised response to theweekly yellow vest protests that damaged his presidency.

In this article, the author discusses the proposed U.S. foreign-derived intangible income regulations and highlights important areas that the regs clarify for taxpayers.

After reviewing Ireland's energy policies, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has recommended that the country implement an automatic increase of its carbon taxes to deter sectors from failing to meet their predetermined emissions limit.

Policymakers should continue the rapid global trend toward tax transparency by embracing public country-by-country reporting for multinationals across all industry sectors, according to a report by the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition.

States that have incorporated the international provisions of the federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act into their tax base could be challenged in court, according to practitioners.

Multistate Tax Commission general counsel Helen Hecht on April 24 floated the idea that states trying to tax global intangible low-taxed income deem as their base the amount of federal tax actually due on GILTI.

Taxation influences nonfinancial firms' survival prospects across advanced and developing countries, according to an IMFworking paper.

The U.N.will consider issues linked to value creation, such aswhether demand-side factors should be taken into account, as part of itswork plan for drafting guidance on the taxation of the digital economy.

The Philippines has introduced a special tax deduction for expenses incurred for the training and research and development expenses of companies that contribute to the preservation or restoration of the environment.

Martin A. Sullivan examines a new paper describing a profit-split method for the taxation of multinational business profit and explainswhy residual profit splits are going to be important in solving the planet's increasingly unstable system of international tax.

François Hellio and Rosemary Billard-Moalic, Attorneys-at-law at CMS Francis Lefebvre Avocats, look at some of the most significant amendments and new measures designed to secure the compliance of French key tax regimeswith the OECD and EU standards on the fight against aggressive tax planning,while maintaining the attractiveness of France as a place to invest.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development recently released a discussion draft that addresses issues related to the transfer pricing aspects of financial transactions, including intra-group loans. Clive Jie-A-Joen, Monique van Herksen, and Fan Bai of Simmons & Simmons discuss two major issues regarding the OECD's financial transactions' discussion draft,which addresses related party debt instruments.

A proposal from Democratic presidential candidate Elizabethwarren to impose a surtax on large corporations' profitswould raise hundreds of billions of dollars butwould also lead to a smaller economy, according to an analysis released Thursday by the right-leaning Tax Foundation.

A provincial election in Canada isn't usually big news, but Tuesday's victory by the conservatives in thewestern province of Alberta is an exception. Voters elected as premier Jason Kenney,who had promised that his government's first actwould be to repeal the carbon tax imposed by incumbent Rachel Notley.

India's Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) is seeking public input on proposed formulas to calculate profits attributable to multinational companies' operations in India.

The Czech Republic is moving aheadwith its own digital tax, citing slow OECD progress on finding a long-term approach to taxing the digital economy, a Czech finance ministry spokesman has confirmed.