OECD

Americas

Muddled goals, broad scope lead to unexpected costs of OECD tax agreement

April 20, 2022

Alex M. Parker, Capitol Counsel LLC, discusses why last year’s OECD-G20 global minimum tax agreement has revealed a scope much broader than most anticipated; provisions of the agreement, revealed in technical commentary released by the OECD in the past months, could affect everything from green energy incentives to affordable housing credits in the U.S.

Americas

Biden’s tax reforms could leave US multinational corporations at a competitive disadvantage

April 13, 2022

Kyle Pomerleau, American Enterprise Institute, warns that while the Biden Administration’s recently released 2023 budget—which includes additional reforms to the tax treatment of multinational corporations—is intended to further align the U.S. tax code with the OECD’s Pillar Two model rules and enhance the competitiveness of U.S. multinational corporations, they actually could leave U.S. companies at a competitive disadvantage.

Americas

Why Pillar Two should be abandoned

March 28, 2022

Allan Lanthier, a former advisor to the Canadian government, argues that when EU finance ministers next meet on April 5, they should abandon Pillar Two, which, he says, is a deeply flawed initiative that includes major changes on which countries had never previously agreed, including a new Domestic Minimum Top-Up tax and a significant rewrite of the Undertaxed Payment Rule.

Americas

The Pillar Two model rules: a train wreck in the making

March 10, 2022

Allan Lanthier, a former advisor to the Canadian government, warns it’s time to hit the emergency brake on the OECD’s model rules for Pillar Two; while close to 140 countries agreed to the October 2021 framework, they didn’t agree to these new model rules, which introduce a lot of uncertainty and complexity.

Europe

Spain’s National Court challenges the deductibility of intragroup services in the absence of a written contract

March 9, 2022

Pilar Barriguete and Victoria Arozamena, Kroll Advisory, S.L., discuss Spain’s recent tendency to challenge intragroup services, denying its corporate income tax deductibility; this view is most recently reflected in the Spanish National Court’s January 25 ruling that it did not consider the provision of intragroup services to be sufficiently proven in the absence of a written contract.