Int'l Tax News

U.S. companies have brought back billions in profits from overseas to take advantage of last year's tax break and all but 5 percent of itwent to share buybacks and debt repayment.

One of the key goals of the U.S. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is to encourage companies to invest and create more jobs in the U.S. This article discusses the key measures in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Actwhichwill affect transfer pricing andwhat should multinationals do to address these issues.

France's multi-layer regime to limit interest deductionswould be reduced to one under the country's 2019 budget draft.

The Tax Court of Canada ruled against the revenue agency's stance in a case involving the Bank of Montreal, the third defeat in a recent string of cases tied to its use of broad rules to combat tax avoidance.

Australia is facing a time crunch to enact changes to its research and development tax regime. The measures, in a bill passing through parliament,will apply to companies' income for the financial year starting July 1, 2018.

Heads of tax at retail companies say they are facing ever-more complex and outlandish claims for revenue from tax authorities around theworld.

The OECD announced September 27 that tax officials from 21 nations and other jurisdictions discussed their experiences regarding country-by-country reporting and how to most effectively use information to assess the tax risk multinational enterprise groups during aworkshop in Yangzhou that the OECD cosponsoredwith China's State Administration of Taxation.

The following reportwas presented at the 8th Annual Internal Revenue Service/Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center Joint Research Conference on Tax Administration, inwashington on June 20, 2018. Itwas prepared and presented by Thomas S. Neubig,who is a founding member of the TaxSageNetwork.com and is former deputy head of the Tax Policy and Statistics Division of the OECD in Paris. Neubig is based in Annandale, Virginia.

Mauritius should repeal statutory restrictions preventing its Financial Intelligence Unit from accessing tax data and start investigating tax evasion as a predicate offense of money laundering, a new Financial Action Task Force (FATF) report says.

A Canadian court reversed C $483 million (about $370.4 million) in adjustments to Cameco Corp.'s taxable income, holding that the company's cross-border uranium saleswere bona fide and properly priced using the comparable uncontrolled price method.

The IRS isn't flinching in the face of criticism that it may have overstepped its authority to draft a basis step-up antiabuse rule under the proposed regs for the global intangible low-taxed income provision.

Key questions remain on how the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act's international provisionswill be coordinatedwith existing transfer pricing rules and advance pricing agreement practices as the IRS faces ongoing resource constraints.

Luxembourg issued tax rulings allowing for double nontaxation to 70 companies besides McDonald's, EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said.

The Supreme Court of India's finding that ambiguouslyworded exemption clauses and notifications must be construed in the government's favor has far-reaching implications because it overturns oft-cited precedent, according to practitioners.

After lengthy discussions that butted up against a deadline for announcing its budget targets, Italy's ruling coalition said itwill cut taxes and increase spending. Economists say the resulting deficit could violate EU target levels.

Competition regulation must keep upwith the realities of digitalization andwith new tools, expertise, and approaches, EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act continues to require tax groups to adjust and refine their book- and tax-reporting processes as they transition from 2017-tax-year rules to those that apply for 2018 and beyond.

The recently proposed regulations interpreting section 951A (REG-104390-18)were eagerly anticipated, yet mostly answered only the easiest questions about global intangible low-taxed income. Left for later are the more controversial topics that could require regulatory rewrites andwhose resolutionwill likely affect companies' projected 2018 effective tax rates, and thus, earnings. (Prior coverage: Tax Notes Int'l , Sep. 17, 2018, p. 1208.) Taxpayers disagree on many of the unresolved questions, so Treasury's decisions could help some and hurt others.

EU member states maintain an edge over developing nations in negotiating bilateral tax treaties because of OECD models, experts told members of the European Parliament.

Declaring that "a post-Brexit Britainwill be an unequivocally pro-business Britain," Prime Minister Theresa May repeated her promise that companieswill enjoy the lowest rate of corporation tax in the G-20 if they invest there.

The Greek government is owed so much in tax arrears from households and companies that it could pay off more than half its massive public debts if it collected it all.

The IRS is planning to outline informal taxpayer guidance on separatewebpages for each of the major international provisions, similar to its approach to the transition tax.

The Dutch government is standing by its plans to abolish century-old dividend taxes and cut corporate tax in a bid to remain attractive to multinationals like Unilever, Shell, and Panasonic.

A spike in entrepreneurial ventures focused heavily on research and development,while earning little income, has sparked an IRS study to determine if such businesses can undertake tax-free distributions, according to an announcement Tuesday. The IRS said in a statement that it is taking a closer look atwhether businesses should be entitled to tax-free treatment during corporate spinoffswhen distributing stocks and securities of a controlled subsidiary to shareholderswithout recognizing gain themselves.

The BEPS definition of intangibles has thrown businesses in the pharmaceutical sector, among others, into uncertainty.

Andrea Bazzo Lauletta, partner at Mattos Filho, looks at Brazil's recent adoption of regulations concerning ultimate beneficial owners of investments in the country.

The Netherlandswants you to know that it is not a tax haven. But Menno Snel, the country's No. 2 finance official, grudgingly acknowledges that the Dutch have become experts at something else: aggressive tax planning.

British people are fed upwith austerity,with a two-to-one majority nowwilling to pay more tax in return for higher health and education spending, the highest support for a larger state in 15 years.

This article discusses of one of tax reform's "sticks"ÔøΩthe base erosion and anti-abuse tax (BEAT). The authors explain the calculation of the BEAT, some of the open issues and considerations, and possible, practical strategies for addressing BEAT exposure.

Much debate over the effectiveness of the 2017 tax overhaul has centered on corporate buybacks, and as November elections approach, that debate is sure to heat up. Buybacks accounted for the largest share of cash spending by S&P 500 companies in the first half of 2018ÔøΩthe first time that has happened in a decade.

Global companieswith Dutch entities could face higher taxes next year as the governmentworks to enact a rule limiting interest deductions. The proposed rule on earnings stripping,whichwould go into effect Jan. 1, compares a company's interest paymentswith its earnings from interest and its revenue to set a limit for how much can be deducted.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta signed a new finance bill into law on Friday, cutting in half a new fuel tax that had led to public anger and strikes but stopping short of demands to scrap or delay it.

The top economic adviser to Brazilian presidential front-runner Jair Bolsonaro is ducking the limelight after an apparent dress-down from his boss over a tax plan.

Argentina is dropping plans to let corporations adjust their balance sheets for rampant inflation to reduce their taxable income. Under the old plan, companies could alter the value of their assetswhen prices rise by 100 percent over a three-year period, but the revised planwill force firms to use consumer prices instead of the higherwholesale price index in their income tax filings.

The IRS is considering giving more time and more guidance for multinationals looking to adjust the basis in the stock of some of their offshore assets under proposed transition rules for the one-time repatriation tax.

Revised transfer pricing guidelines are providing clarity to the Singapore tax community on the implementation of the amended transfer pricing legislation. The revisions include a penalty for noncompliancewith the mandatory transfer pricing documentation requirements, selective adoption of the OECD's BEPS Action Plan 13, among others.

New Zealand's Taxworking Groupwon't recommend a change to the country's 28% corporate tax ratewhen it makes its final report in February. New Zealand's government tasked the groupwith reviewing the country's entire tax system.

European Union analysis that large digital companies like Google Inc., Facebook Inc., and Amazon.com Inc. don't pay enough in tax is flawed, according to a study by Copenhagen Economics, an independent Danish-based consultancy.

Panasonic has announced that it is relocating its headquarters from the U.K. to the Netherlands, blaming concerns over Brexit-related uncertainty. But is there a different reason behind the move? This article explores the likelihood that Brexit concernswere the main reason for the relocation and posits another reason for the move.

The Hong Kong government enacted legislation in July 2018 to implement key actions arising from the OECD's BEPS agenda via its Inland Revenue Amendment No. 6 Ordinance 2018. The Ordinance codifies transfer pricing rules into Hong Kong's domestic tax law, introduces mandatory transfer pricing documentation requirements, expands the Advance Pricing Arrangement regime, and introduces a penalty regimewith potential civil and criminal sanctions. This article is a summary of the authors' key observations regarding the Ordinancewith a focus on the transfer pricing aspects.

France's promised business tax cutwill be delayed nine months according to its budget released Sept. 24.

Canadian manufacturerswant the government to offer fullwrite-offs for machinery and assets in a bid to keep upwith the changes included in U.S. tax reform.

Businesses should review existing stapled structures, set up to convert trading income into more favorably taxed passive income, as Australia's government moves a bill through parliament to crack down on the practice.

The IRS has announced that the advance pricing and mutual agreement program has reorganized to consolidate the program's resources to improve internal processes, resolve disputes, and increase taxpayer service.

In this article, the author discusses the growing use of cross-border audits, examining their connection to the push for transparency and how they operate bothwithin and outside the European Union. She addresses concerns about taxpayer secrecy, the potential benefits for both tax authorities and taxpayers, and discusses how taxpayers can prepare to face this new form of audit.

In this article, the authors discuss Alta Energy, inwhich the Tax Court of Canada held that a Luxembourg company's sale of shares in a Canadian shale development company to Chevron Inc.was exempt from capital gains tax as treaty-protected property under the Canada-Luxembourg treaty.

Too many EU tax treaties unfairly restrict developing countries' source taxing rights, and EU member states should reexamine and renegotiate those treaties to effectively lead on policy coherence for development, a new report says.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told business leaders she is in favor of ending the reunification tax for all taxpayers, and that Germany can't "simply decouple" from theworld in thewake of U.S. corporate tax reform.

The European Commission's finding that McDonald's didn't receive illegal state aid from Luxembourg doesn't mean there is nothingwrongwith the EU tax system, EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said.

Treasury may be trying to blunt some practitioner criticism about the potential breadth of the global intangible low-taxed income provision's pro rata share antiabuse rule, including its capacity to catch older transactions.