Fresh Ideas Emerge for New EU Budget Levies

This paper uses a transaction-level simulation of a stylized U.S.-parented, Belgium-holding, India-operating MNE structure to examine how a prospective Indian Qualified Domestic Minimum Top-Up Tax would interact with India’s Section 10AA SEZ incentive, the Pillar Two Substance-Based Income Exclusion, and Belgium’s minimum-tax exposure. The simulation suggests that Section 10AA would retain only 10–15% of its nominal value once excess profits are subject to a prospective QDMTT, while the SBIE preserves a smaller substance-linked benefit. The analysis is explicitly forward-looking because India had not enacted a QDMTT, IIR, or UTPR as of the period examined by the paper.

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This paper examines the misalignment between international tax regimes and climate and sustainable-development objectives and proposes a framework for climate-compatible international taxation. It identifies three principal reforms: aligning tax rules with decarbonization goals, mobilizing sustainable investment and climate finance, and incorporating equity principles into international tax governance. The paper argues that integrating sustainability and climate justice into the international tax architecture is necessary to support an inclusive and equitable low-carbon transition.

Citation: Manchester Journal of International Economic Law, Vol. 23, Issue 3, 2026 [forthcoming].

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This paper examines the distributional consequences of the 2026 Side-by-Side Package’s Substance-based Tax Incentive Safe Harbour for low-wage economies, focusing on West Africa and Nigeria. It argues that because the safe harbour protects tax incentives only up to a cap tied to eligible payroll costs, West African jurisdictions are less able to preserve tax incentives than higher-wage economies, potentially shifting revenue from their treasuries to foreign jurisdictions. The paper identifies a qualified domestic minimum top-up tax as the principal mechanism for recapturing that revenue and argues that Nigeria’s existing minimum-tax rule requires greater alignment with the GloBE base and QDMTT qualification standards.

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This paper examines competing situs rules for assigning crypto-assets to taxing jurisdictions and argues that, because such assets have no natural location, fiscal situs rules should instead be understood as jurisdictional assignment functions determining which jurisdictions are entitled to tax a holding. It compares six candidate rules using their exhaustiveness, exclusivity, and determinacy, treating double taxation as overlapping jurisdictional assignments and double non-taxation as gaps in those assignments before treaty relief applies. The paper argues that rules producing gaps in taxing jurisdiction are more costly to remedy than rules producing overlapping claims.

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This paper examines the legal framework governing refunds of tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) after the Supreme Court held those tariffs unlawful. It analyzes the limits of U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s authority to reliquidate entries and issue refunds, discusses the role of the Court of International Trade in facilitating large-scale tariff refunds, and considers how the resolution of the IEEPA litigation may shape the handling of future tariff disputes.

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This paper analyzes 6,050 disclosed royalty licensing agreements from seven jurisdictions to measure the informational value of commonly observable comparability factors in external royalty comparable searches for transfer pricing. It finds that licensor identity explains substantially more variation in royalty rates than commonly observable comparability factors, supporting greater reliance on internal comparables and suggesting that public external comparables may often be more useful for establishing arm’s-length ranges than for deriving a precise pricing benchmark.  

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This paper proposes amendments to the draft protocol on the taxation of income from cross-border services under the UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation. It evaluates provisions on taxes covered, royalties, dual residence, service fees, automated digital services, physical presence, and relief from double taxation, and recommends treaty language intended to improve the protocol’s administrability, particularly for capital-importing countries.

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This paper examines why cultural and creative tax incentives that are formally available across multiple jurisdictions often remain inaccessible to cross-border operators in practice. It introduces the Structural Fiscal Access Constraints (SFAC) model to identify legal, administrative, and institutional barriers to cross-border access and proposes the Cultural-Creative Tax Incentive Model (CCTIM), a coordination framework designed to improve access without requiring tax harmonization or the transfer of national fiscal sovereignty.

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Develops the Source Sovereignty Framework (SSF), a continental proposal under which African states would coordinate as a bloc to tax cross-border income at its source through gross-basis withholding integrated into African payment systems. The paper proposes an African Union legal framework, a phased transition away from the existing bilateral treaty network, and anti-defection mechanisms, while arguing that the approach could strengthen African control over cross-border taxation and substantially increase tax revenues.

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Examines whether the OECD’s Side-by-Side Package can be reconciled with the institutional structure of Pillar Two after exempting U.S.-parented groups from the Income Inclusion Rule and Undertaxed Profits Rule despite a 14% U.S. minimum tax. The paper concludes that the accommodation is likely to be permanent, entrenching fragmentation in global minimum tax governance rather than achieving universal implementation.

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