2026

This paper examines the taxation of income earned by social media influencers and other digital content creators, focusing on tax compliance, informal digital labor, and cross-border income. Focusing on Indonesia, it considers income from advertising revenue sharing, sponsored content, affiliate commissions, and virtual gifts, as well as the limitations of existing domestic withholding mechanisms. The paper also examines how U.S. tax withheld by foreign platforms on income attributable to American viewers creates cross-border foreign tax credit and documentation issues for Indonesian creators, and proposes platform-based information reporting and clearer guidance on foreign-source income.

This article analyzes the structural, political, and operational implications of the OECD Pillar Two Side-by-Side Package released in January 2026. It examines the new Simplified ETR and Substance-Based Tax Incentive Safe Harbours, the extension of the Transitional CbCR Safe Harbour, and the Side-by-Side and UPE Safe Harbours, including their interaction with the IIR, UTPR, and QDMTTs. The author questions whether these measures meaningfully simplify the GloBE Rules and argues that their interaction with domestic tax systems may increase compliance costs, litigation, and implementation asymmetries.

Citation: Latin American Tax Policy Forum (LATPF) Post, January 2026.

This paper examines how Mexican labor, tax and financial law would apply to employer-provided AI token budgets and proposes a four-level framework based primarily on how freely employees may use the tokens. Tokens restricted to work purposes would constitute work tools rather than salary, while tokens available for personal use would constitute in-kind benefits forming part of salary and taxable income. Transferable tokens usable as payment could potentially qualify as virtual assets under Mexico’s Fintech Law if they are not denominated in currency, although the paper concludes that AI tokens cannot themselves constitute money or replace wages required to be paid in legal tender.

This General Report examines the function of corporate tax residence across domestic income tax systems and tax treaties, drawing on branch reports prepared for the International Fiscal Association’s 2025 Lisbon Congress. It identifies substantial variation in domestic approaches involving incorporation, governance and other residence criteria, alongside a trend toward expanding the scope of corporate residence. At the treaty level, the report finds that most treaties still use place of effective management as a tie-breaker but identifies a progressive shift toward mutual agreement procedures, which the author argues creates uncertainty because corporate residence often determines exposure to worldwide taxation.

This article examines the 15 percent minimum effective tax rate and controlled foreign company rules introduced by the Nigeria Tax Act 2025. It analyzes the Act’s treatment of certain undistributed profits of controlled foreign companies and the imposition of top-up tax where relevant foreign subsidiaries are taxed below the prescribed minimum ETR, comparing these rules with income-inclusion concepts and the OECD/G20 Pillar Two framework. The authors emphasize that, although Nigeria’s regime resembles aspects of the GloBE Rules, Nigeria remains outside the Inclusive Framework’s Two-Pillar Solution and has adopted a distinct domestic regime.

This work examines changes in international corporate taxation from 2008 to 2021, culminating in the October 2021 agreement establishing a two-pillar framework and a 15 percent country-by-country minimum effective corporate tax rate. It analyzes how the 2008 financial crisis and COVID-19 pandemic contributed to reform through G20 and OECD initiatives and examines the role of the Transnational Tax Policy Community in shaping the international tax agenda. The author also argues that domestic politics significantly affect implementation and enforcement, highlighting the continuing tension between multilateral tax cooperation and national sovereignty.

This paper examines Article 12AA of the 2025 UN Model Tax Convention, which grants source-based taxing rights over imported cross-border services regardless of the service provider’s physical presence. It argues that the provision can help developing countries address base erosion and simplify tax collection by complementing traditional physical-nexus rules and reducing the need for complex service classifications. The paper also considers the challenge of translating the new provision into practical tax administration.

This paper examines how six types of tax incentives interact with Pillar Two and the Qualified Domestic Minimum Top-up Tax by simulating their post-QDMTT effective tax rates using a common GloBE Income base. It finds that income-based exemptions and non-qualified tax credits are compressed toward the 15% minimum rate, while qualified refundable tax credits generally preserve more incentive value because they are treated as GloBE Income rather than reductions of Covered Taxes. Accelerated depreciation produces an intermediate result because its effect is primarily one of timing rather than a permanent tax difference.

This article examines whether the proposed global minimum corporate tax can adequately address corporate tax arbitrage and argues that deficiencies in international tax dispute resolution may complicate its implementation. It calls for strengthening the mutual agreement procedure and examines the potential conflict between national tax sovereignty and investor protections under investor-state dispute settlement, particularly as minimum-tax rules are implemented through domestic legislation. The author argues that reconciling these regimes is important to addressing investment disputes that could challenge the implementation of BEPS 2.0.

This article examines the effectively connected income rules governing foreign persons engaged in a U.S. trade or business and identifies two features that can distort the determination of U.S. business income. The authors argue that the U.S.-office-or-other-fixed-place-of-business requirement can underinclude income generated by U.S. business activities, while the residual force-of-attraction rule can overinclude income. They propose eliminating the USFPB requirement for determining the ECI status and source of certain income, as well as the residual force-of-attraction rule, to more accurately capture income generated by foreign persons’ U.S. business activities.

This paper examines why governments concede taxing rights in bilateral tax treaties. Min constructs a global dataset coding 20 provisions in more than 4,000 bilateral tax treaties and analyzes how political institutions and ideology affect host-country taxing rights, including rights over income and payments generated exclusively by foreign firms. The paper finds that democracies across the ideological spectrum, as well as left-wing nondemocracies, grant lower host taxing rights on these foreign-firm tax bases, but not on other bases such as foreign individuals’ income or domestic firms’ outgoing payments.

This article examines the characterization of cross-border software payments as royalties, focusing on arrangements in which royalty elements may be embedded in broader software or service payments and thereby raise withholding-tax issues. It compares the treatment of royalties under the Commentaries to the OECD and UN Model Tax Conventions, recent judicial decisions, and the Australian Taxation Office’s TR 2024/D1. Azzi argues that TR 2024/D1 departs from international norms and creates uncertainty that may increase the incidence and duration of treaty-based disputes over the characterization of software payments.

Citation: Bulletin for International Taxation, 2026 (Volume 80), No. 9/10 (Next issue) https://doi.org/10.59403/acm9qw

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.

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].

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.

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.

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.

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.  

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.

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.

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.

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.

Presents empirical and survey evidence on how U.S. multinational enterprises respond to the Global Minimum Tax. Using corporate disclosures, ownership data, and a survey of U.S. tax directors, the authors find that U.S. multinationals are more likely than their European counterparts to restructure ownership chains to reduce Pillar Two exposure and that strategic organizational changes, together with policy responses by low-tax jurisdictions, substantially attenuate the intended effects of the Global Minimum Tax.

This paper provides a technical primer on the Fifth Session zero-draft protocol on the taxation of cross-border services under the proposed UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation. It explains the draft’s treaty-style structure, including provisions on the allocation of taxing rights, relief from double taxation, dispute settlement, and administrative assistance, and identifies key innovations and gaps that may be addressed during the negotiation process.

This article examines what the authors describe as a paradox in U.S. federal tax policy: rejecting broad-based consumption taxation while relying on tariffs as a source of federal revenue. It traces the historical development of U.S. tax and tariff policy, presents empirical models of the economic consequences of this policy choice, and compares tax systems in other countries in outlining potential approaches to federal revenue reform.

Citation: 14 Tex. A&M L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2026).

This essay examines the legal authority of the U.S. president to impose secondary tariffs on countries that trade with targeted states, including Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and Cuba. It considers whether existing U.S. law authorizes the use of tariffs as instruments of indirect economic coercion and whether wartime circumstances affect the scope of presidential tariff authority in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Learning Resources. The authors also consider whether Congress should delegate such tariff powers to the executive and, if so, under what constraints.

Citation: 120 Am. J. Int’l L. _ (2026).

This paper examines the continuing relevance of the place of effective management (POEM) test for corporate tax residence under India’s Income Tax Act following the OECD’s BEPS 2.0 reforms. It argues that the Pillar Two Global Anti-Base Erosion (GloBE) rules reduce POEM’s traditional anti-avoidance role for large multinational enterprises by emphasizing effective tax rates rather than jurisdictional residence, while concluding that POEM remains relevant for entities outside the scope of Pillar Two, treaty residence determinations, and governance-based tax planning. The paper also examines the interaction between POEM and Pillar Two, highlighting areas of regulatory overlap, conceptual divergence, and increased compliance costs.

This paper develops a comprehensive legal and economic framework for taxing cross-border services. It compares destination-based consumption taxes such as VAT, gross-revenue taxes including digital services taxes, income-based nexus and withholding rules, and anti-avoidance measures directed at deductible cross-border service payments. The authors argue that evaluating these instruments separately obscures their interactions and conclude that broader reliance on destination-based taxation may address the challenges posed by digitalized services trade more effectively than narrower and more distortionary alternatives.

Citation: CESifo Working Paper No. 12845

This paper examines the relationship between tax competitiveness and business research and development expenditures across EU countries. Using data from the International Tax Competitiveness Index, OECD, and Eurostat, the authors assess the effects of corporate tax rules and tax-policy instruments on private-sector R&D. They find that overall tax competitiveness is significantly associated with business R&D expenditures, while the effects of R&D tax credits are mixed, and they highlight the importance of less-studied instruments such as tax depreciation rules.

This paper examines whether a Qualified Domestic Minimum Top-up Tax that effectively eliminates the benefit of domestic tax incentives could breach investment-treaty protections. Revisiting the Micula v. Romania arbitration, a rare merits award centered on a host state’s cancellation of tax incentives, the author assesses when the introduction of a QDMTT may violate the fair-and-equitable-treatment standard. The paper highlights the potential tension between implementation of the OECD Pillar Two Global Minimum Tax and states’ obligations under international investment agreements.

This article examines whether Pigouvian taxes remain effective when the relevant markets and harms extend across national borders. The authors develop a framework centered on the location of markets and harms, interjurisdictional competition and heterogeneity, and distributional considerations to determine when cross-national coordination is necessary and feasible. Applying the framework to carbon emissions, financial transactions, soda consumption, and wealth concentration, the article identifies structural risks of evasion, arbitrage, and regulatory failure and proposes design features that may improve the effectiveness of cross-border corrective taxation.

Citation: Cardozo Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2026-15 (forthcoming U.C. Davis L. Rev.)

This paper examines how U.S. public firms respond to increased scrutiny from foreign tax authorities following the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Using proprietary data on H-1B visa lottery outcomes, the authors find that firms with greater exposure to foreign tax audits are more likely to recruit foreign tax experts and that firms whose petitions are randomly selected subsequently achieve more favorable audit outcomes. The effects are concentrated among experts with prior experience dealing with foreign tax authorities and suggest that specialized local institutional knowledge can reduce firms’ cross-border tax-enforcement burdens.

This article examines the evolution of international tax treaty anti-abuse mechanisms addressing treaty shopping and tax avoidance, using Aiken Industries as a starting point to analyze the balance between legal certainty and interpretive flexibility. It considers mechanisms including beneficial ownership, the Principal Purpose Test, and Limitation on Benefits rules, and explores how artificial intelligence could assist in interpreting and applying such measures. The article also addresses risks associated with the use of AI in tax administration, including transparency, explainability, and regulatory compliance.

This dissertation examines the arm’s length standard from the perspective of developing and dependent economies, assessing both empirical and theoretical critiques of its application in international transfer pricing. It considers the OECD’s current treatment of the standard, including the two-pillar framework, and analyzes alternative practices such as Brazil’s fixed margins and China’s Location Specific Advantages. The author ultimately proposes an experimentalist governance model that would allow developing countries to adopt and peer-review similar approaches, particularly where limited fiscal capacity makes enforcement of the traditional arm’s length standard difficult.

The OECD reports the latest peer review results for preferential tax regimes under the BEPS Action 5 minimum standard, using the revised peer review methodology for the first time. The Forum on Harmful Tax Practices reached conclusions on 13 regimes: seven were found “not harmful,” while six in Azerbaijan, Malaysia, Peru, and Serbia remain “under review.” Since the BEPS Project began, the Forum has reviewed 347 regimes, more than 40 percent of which have been or are being abolished.

Using data covering 223 tax systems, this paper examines how jurisdictions have responded to the OECD Pillar Two framework and finds substantial differences in its implementation. It finds that the long-term decline in statutory corporate income tax rates appears to have slowed since the 2021 agreement, while low-tax jurisdictions continue to compete through substance-based tax incentives and preferential regimes designed to interact favorably with Pillar Two rules.

This paper examines the factors determining inclusion on the EU list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions. It finds that countries with greater financial secrecy and less economic bargaining power with the EU are more likely to be listed, while some excluded EU tax havens share characteristics with listed non-EU jurisdictions.

This article examines Hong Kong’s patent box regime in light of regional tax competition and the OECD global minimum tax. It proposes refundable tax credits, increased government grants and subsidies, and additional individual income tax incentives to make Hong Kong’s innovation policies more compatible with the GloBE rules.

This article examines how courts in the East African Community assess national tax and tariff measures that may conflict with common-market commitments. It argues for an explicit proportionality framework to balance states’ fiscal autonomy with the free movement of goods and the integrity of the EAC Common Market.

This paper examines Nigeria’s shift toward digital tax administration and the resulting issues involving data protection, cybersecurity, taxpayer rights, and regulatory fragmentation. It also addresses the taxation of cross-border digital activities and considers OECD initiatives in the context of Nigeria’s evolving digital tax framework.

This article examines how the shift away from globalization may reshape taxation and tax policy. It analyzes the relationship among globalization, tax competition, capital mobility, and the financing of social safety nets, arguing that deglobalization may give governments greater room to raise revenue without the same degree of tax-base erosion associated with international tax competition. The article also considers the potential revenue implications of higher tariffs and reduced tax evasion.

This paper examines the structural challenges facing Rwanda in taxing business profits arising from digital transactions. It analyzes gaps in the country’s digital tax framework, including limitations in permanent establishment and digital nexus rules, as well as jurisdictional and enforcement challenges. The paper also considers international responses to digitalization, including the OECD/G20 Pillar One and Pillar Two framework, and recommends reforms addressing digital presence, bilateral tax treaties, and regional coordination within the East African Community.

This OECD Taxation Working Paper provides an early empirical, ex post assessment of how multinational enterprises responded to the introduction of the Global Minimum Tax. Using the EUR 750 million revenue threshold and firm-level data, it examines the reform’s effects on effective tax rates, investment, and employment, as well as whether MNEs adjusted their behavior in anticipation of implementation. The paper also uses its estimated effects on effective tax rates to assess the potential revenue raised by the Global Minimum Tax in its first year.

This article examines location-specific rents as a basis for allocating taxing rights among sovereign states and addresses the practical challenge of measuring such rents. It argues that tax competition can help quantify the income international firms derive specifically from operating in a particular jurisdiction. The analysis has implications for inter-nation equity and the allocation of source-country taxing rights in international taxation.

This paper examines tax compliance challenges faced by multinational enterprises operating in emerging markets, focusing on administrative discretion, regulatory ambiguity, and aggressive tax audits. Using a mining project in Sierra Leone as a case study, it analyzes how a multinational enterprise responded to a contested tax assessment and argues for digital compliance systems as a means of institutionalizing tax controls and reducing exposure to discretionary enforcement. The paper highlights the role of internal tax governance and digitalization in managing tax risk in weak institutional environments.

This report reviews the work of the Tax Inspectors Without Borders initiative, a joint OECD/UNDP program supporting developing jurisdictions in tax audits, enforcement, and international tax administration. It highlights how capacity-building programs are being used to strengthen audit outcomes, address cross-border tax issues, and combat illicit financial flows through practical assistance to tax authorities.

This paper provides a structured survey of three decades of empirical research on tax-motivated income shifting by multinational corporations. It organizes the literature around the mechanisms, determinants, consequences, and estimated magnitudes of income shifting, and identifies areas where future research could improve measurement methods and expand analysis of multinational tax planning behavior.