BEPS Tail Shouldn’t Wag Global Investment Dog

I spoke recently on a panel in Tokyo on the future of international tax planning after BEPS (the OECD's & G20's Action Plan to counter Base Erosion & Profit Shifting). The panel also featured a senior official at the OECD and practitioners from the US, Japan, Germany, France, Ireland and the Netherlands.

It was refreshing to hear the OECD official acknowledge that the international corporate tax planning targeted by BEPS constitutes legal arrangements and transactions and not illegal tax evasion. Moreover, she also acknowledged that in the area of treaty-shopping, governments themselves have to take some responsibility for creating treaty shopping and arbitrage opportunities through negotiation of inconsistent treaties, for example with differing withholding tax rates on interest, dividends or royalties or capital gains exemptions that are broader in some treaties than in others. That said, the OECD is clearly determined to counter previously accepted corporate tax