Int'l Tax News

The UK government aims to introduce its carbon border tax on Jan. 1, 2027, and is seeking feedback on its design, implementation, and administration—including the scope of products and ways to calculate emissions.

The United States is working to protect the benefits of the research credit under pillar 2 global minimum tax, possibly through OECD administrative guidance, a top Treasury official said.

Jefferson VanderWolk takes exception to criticism of the use of refundable tax credits, explaining that in fact refundable tax credits are a legitimate policy response to the current GLOBE rules.

The EU commission says rules on voting procedures do not need to be changed, but EU countries could agree to activate a procedure allowed by the rules under which a unanimous decision could be taken to permit qualified majority decisions in some areas currently subject to unanimity, including tax.

The EU will soon put in motion a 2020 commitment to hold annual talks with the United Kingdom regarding measures to counter harmful tax practices, according to a draft European Commission/EU Council statement.

New Treasury Department data shows companies have registered 45,500 projects for possible sale on a new tax-credit marketplace.

The terms of reference for a proposed U.N. convention on international tax cooperation should provide for funding to ensure that the least developed countries can attend upcoming negotiations in New York, a Colombian official said.

Peter Mason reviews the latest report by the OECD on corporate tax statistics to assess the impact of the base erosion and profit-shifting project.

The United Arab Emirates is consulting on the global minimum tax framework, including policy options for the extraterritorial rules. The UAE wants feedback on how the framework interacts with the country’s new corporate tax system and implementation of rules which ensure the top-up tax is collected on foreign in-scope entities too.

Australia should exempt multinational companies from reporting tax information from each country where they have operations if they’re not required to report it at home, tax and accounting firms told the Treasury department.

If companies make transfer pricing adjustments after the end of the year, as many do, they could be disqualified from using a safe harbor that simplifies the global minimum tax’s calculations and reduces their tax liabilities.

France started offering its green industry tax credit to companies to offset costs up to €350 million ($381 million) per qualified investment in energy. The tax credit is expected to generate €23 billion in investments, create 40,000 jobs, and cut 35 million tons of CO2 emissions by 2030.

Developing countries laying out recommendations for a new framework convention at the United Nations are seeking protocols to address the taxation of digital services, environmental taxes, exchange of information for both services and wealth, and illicit financial flows.

Kimberly S. Blanchard examines the U.S. tax treatment of a sale of a partnership interest by a foreign person and explains why the Tax Court’s decision in Rawat was incorrect.

The Biden administration is proposing an expansion of a levy that targets companies with high profits and low taxes.

A recent agreement to extend the length of the “unilateral measures compromise” between the United States and five other countries over their digital services taxes will apply to Turkey as well.

Reuven S. Avi-Yonah argues that because digital services taxes are used to offset the taxation impediment that “digital giants” cannot be taxed under permanent establishment rules, they should qualify as an in-lieu-of tax and therefore be creditable.

European finance ministers said they are committed to acting in the collective interest to boost the EU Capital Markets Union, but they insist that any related tax initiatives be left to the member states.

New Zealand’s pillar 2 global minimum tax rules should start taking effect in 2025 and be incorporated into law by reference to OECD model rules and guidance, a parliamentary committee has recommended.

The EU Council’s Belgian presidency has persuaded some reluctant member states to accept a previously rejected deal with the European Parliament on the reclassification of digital platform workers.

In the wake of a significant and surprising district court decision holding the Corporate Transparency Act unconstitutional, practitioners expect the case to influence other challenges to the beneficial ownership reporting regime.

Tax authorities in Africa and Ukraine said technical assistance from the OECD in transfer pricing has resulted in higher revenue and improved compliance.

Pierce O’Reilly, head of business and international taxes at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, noted that the minimum tax’s substance-based income exclusion rule will continue to support investment into low-capacity countries that tend to offer significant corporate investments.

Mindy Herzfeld examines how the United States can increase research and development and keep the resulting intellectual property stateside.

Martin A. Sullivan examines Form 10-K data from multinational pharmaceutical companies indicating that recent tax policy changes haven’t induced them to shift profits back to the United States, and he explores why that is a different story for tech companies.

Richard S. Collier and Ian F. Dykes explain the new rules released by HM Revenue & Customs on the transfer pricing risk framework and detail the relationship with the OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines and the base erosion and profit-shifting project.

House taxwriters coalesced over their worries about the impact of the OECD global tax deal’s approach to digital services taxes but found little common ground across the aisle on whether the U.S. response should be to scrap participation or stick with the talks.

Low-capacity jurisdictions may not benefit from the OECD’s optional framework to simplify transfer pricing for some business transactions, because of a lack of data and administrative resources available to determine the revenue companies owe from such transfer pricing.

After 10 years in the European Parliament, Paul Tang, chair of the EP's subcommittee on tax matters, won't be running for a third term, leaving the future direction of the FISC unclear.

In Solar New US Holding Corp. v. Commissioner, a Tax Court challenge that could have implications for other rules, a company argues that the statutory repeal of the downward attribution exception makes the definition of a controlled foreign corporation under anti-inversion regulations invalid.

Lucas de Lima Carvalho examines how the “best practices” of international tax law developed and highlights the need for healthy skepticism toward this term.

Spotify Premium subscribers in France will soon get a price increase due to additional costs on music streaming services imposed by the government, as part of the CNM Tax, the company says in a statement.

Dubai, the Middle East’s financial hub, issued a decision to impose a 20% annual levy on the taxable income of foreign banks not based in the emirate’s international financial center.

US Republican lawmakers say the OECD’s multilateral tax treaty produces a loss of revenue to other countries, including China, and express concern the treaty is not effective to curb the proliferation of digital services taxes.

So-called phantom foreign direct investment, often undertaken through shell special purpose vehicles, has declined sharply since 2021, the European Commission said, noting the U.S. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act’s major effects on cross-border financial flows.

U.S. negotiators on pillar 1 are working on a more robust outcome that would provide more tax certainty and a mandatory amount B, sometimes referred to as phase 2, according to a Treasury official.

Revised profit allocation rules under pillar 1 of the OECD’s two-pillar global tax reform plan could have cost the United States as much as $4.4 billion in 2021, according to caveated estimates from the Joint Committee on Taxation.

The UK government will abolish the non-dom tax status and replace it with a "modern, simpler and fairer residency-based system," Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt says in an effort to raise tax revenues.

The UK proposed a variety of tax breaks for small businesses in its Spring 2024 budget released Wednesday, along with plans to curb tax avoidance, implement reporting rules for crypto assets and new measures to regulate tax advisors.

Senior Economist for The Tax Foundation says the UN should prioritize harmonization, reducing complexity, and cross-border investment to increase international tax cooperation.

Robert Goulder comments on one of Liberty Global’s multiple disputes with the IRS.

Had the OECD’s Pillar One proposal been in place during 2021, it would have cost the Treasury $1.4 billion, according to a new government analysis.

Trade groups have warned the Australian Taxation Office that its draft software royalty rules do not properly distinguish between payments on copyright articles and contravene preexisting international norms regarding the taxation of software.

Reuven S. Avi-Yonah advocates for Congress to adopt a general antiabuse rule to combat loopholes formed by the voluminous tax code.

Sol Picciotto, Jeffery M. Kadet, and Bob Michel analyze and compare the two proposals for a subject-to-tax rule to be included in tax treaties, one from the U.N. Tax Committee and the other from the G20/OECD inclusive framework on base erosion and profit shifting.

Jeremy Hunt wants UK retail investors to help revive the fortune of the country’s ailing stock market by creating an ISA, a tax-free savings account, for investing in UK equities.

The World Trade Organization agreed to extend a moratorium on e-commerce tariffs for two years after marathon negotiations in Abu Dhabi, while failing to secure deals on other contentious trade issues including a crackdown on agriculture and fisheries subsidies.

According to the National Foreign Trade Counsel and other industry groups, Australia’s draft ruling to tax payments for software and intellectual property is “overly broad”. The ruling targets goods and services that are often made up of many components, and applying a withholding tax to the entire payment is overreaching.

The EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism taxes carbon-intensive imports to prevent a flood of cheap imports from countries with highly polluting industries, but only a fraction of EU companies expected to report emissions did so by an early deadline.