In intra-group finance hybrid instruments allow for tailor-made form of finance. Hence hybrid finance is often used for international tax planning in multinational groups. Due to a lack of international tax harmonization or tax coordination qualification conflict can arise. A specific hybrid instrument is classified as debt in one country, and as equity in the other country. This may lead to double taxation. In the reverse case, double non-taxation can arise. Against this legal background one might expect that cross-border hybrid intra-group finance is advantageous in comparison to classical debt finance in case of double-non-taxation while it can be expected to be disadvantageous in the case of double taxation of the yield. Previous studies do not include qualification conflicts. Thus the question arises how qualification conflicts are affecting an intra-group finance decision. We examine effects of such qualification conflicts, resulting from the use of cross-border, intra-group hybrid finance, on the tax-advantageousness as compared to classical debt finance. The analysis is based on a binomial simulation model including economic and legal uncertainty. We show that the results of our analysis under uncertainty vary significantly when compared to the more obvious results under economic and legal certainty. (author´s abstract) / Series: Discussion Papers SFB International Tax Coordination

In July 2013 the OECD, to tackle multinational tax avoidance, published its Action Plan against base erosion and profit shifting. The Action Plan suggests a variety of legislative and administrative measures to eliminate frictions from interactions between domestic tax laws and international tax treaties, including potential double non-taxation of businesses operating in several countries. By virtue of the OECD's structure, the proposed measures have been designed and developed predominantly by representatives from the tax administrations of OECD member countries. Our research investigates the views and opinions of other stakeholders in this process, namely tax experts from practice. We conduct a conjoint analysis, surveying experts in international taxation regarding their perceptions and beliefs on the effectiveness of the proposed actions. We find that experts rank actions that are aimed at enhancing international coordination and cooperation, as well as actions that reduce legal uncertainty, higher than other actions. Of lesser importance are antitreaty-abuse measures, further transparency at the taxpayer level and amendments to the definition of permanent establishment. (authors' abstract) / Series: WU International Taxation Research Paper Series

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) under Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) Action 2 indicated that tax arbitrage via hybrid mismatch arrangements "result in a substantial erosion of the taxable bases of the countries concerned" and "have an overall negative impact on competition, efficiency, transparency and fairness." The relevant action allowing for neutralising the effects of hybrid mismatch arrangements is therefore needed and justified. To achieve that purpose, the OECD developed different anti-hybrid rules under BEPS Action 2. In that regard, however, one may ask whether addressing tax arbitrage via hybrid mismatches as proposed by the OECD is of interest and relevance for developing countries. This paper aims to map that unexplored research area by means of a comparative analysis in four developing countries - Uruguay, Colombia, Brazil, and South Africa. / Series: WU International Taxation Research Paper Series

The present study addresses the question of how taxpayers' perceptions of government and tax authorities are influenced by media coverage. The effect that national political topics, such as tax legislation and the expenditure of tax revenues, have on the tax payer is examined. Tax compliance depends on trust in authorities, i.e., a commonly shared belief that politicians and tax authorities act in order to promote social welfare, and the perceived power of authorities, i.e., taxpayers' perceptions of tax authorities' ability to detect and pursue tax crime. We investigate the influence of specific tax related information in the news on intended tax compliance. Results from a questionnaire-based experiment with 487 employees indicate that media coverage influences the indicated trust in tax authorities, as well as the perceived power of governmental institutions, and consequently, has an impact on participants' intended tax compliance. The findings suggest that governments should actively engage in the provision of relevant information on tax matters. This would increase both trust in the state and the authorities as well as awareness of their power regarding the enforcement of tax laws, effectively acting as a means to regulate taxpayers' behavior. (authors' abstract) / Series: WU International Taxation Research Paper Series

The overall aim of this article is to analyse the taxpayers' rights in relation to the emerging standard of transparency with specific reference to Brazil, Colombia, South Africa and Uruguay. Exchange of information between tax authorities is increasing rapidly all around the world. This global development is largely the result of the introduction of the standard of transparency by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ("OECD") with the political mandate of the G20 and more recently, in 2013, the introduction of the global standard of automatic exchange of information. Governments have agreed that exchange of information is necessary to prevent tax evasion and to tackle tax avoidance including aggressive tax planning. All surveyed countries have accepted the standard of transparency including the standard of automatic exchange of information. Furthermore, it is evident that the development of such standards appears to have taken place in a coordinated manner, led mainly by international organizations comprising governmental officials. This article has first provided a comparative overview of the rules that Brazil, Colombia, South Africa and Uruguay have introduced to protect the taxpayers' rights in the exchange of information process being the right to access to public information, the right to confidentiality, the right to privacy, and the procedural rights (right to be informed, the right to be notified and right to object and appeal). Thereafter, this article has assessed whether the rules introduced by the surveyed countries to protect these rights are consistent with the fundamental taxpayers' rights that belong to the rule of law of these countries and with the principles of good governance and fiscal transparency. The main conclusion is that the countries have introduced to some extent similar rules to protect the right to confidentiality, right to privacy and the procedural rights in the exchange of information. However, some differences may be found in the detail level of protection of confidentiality in South Africa and in respect of the procedural rights in Uruguay. One of the drawbacks of these rules is that the rules introduced by the surveyed countries do not ensure that the protection of the right to confidentiality and the right to privacy is effectively guaranteed. The results of the analysis show that these rules do not protect the taxpayer in case of breach of confidentiality or misuse of the information exchanged. This article argues that the differences among rules and the lack of protection for taxpayer information may hinder the effective protection of the taxpayer and the tax administration should guarantee the protection of the taxpayer rights as part of the rule of law. Therefore, this article provides in Section 4 three recommendations addressing the right to confidentiality, the right to privacy and the taxpayers' procedural rights. These recommendations may be extended (as best practices) to other developing countries on a similar economic and legal scale. However, further research will be needed to see whether the conclusions of this article are also applicable to (other) developing countries. / Series: WU International Taxation Research Paper Series

This paper investigates the effects of double tax treaties (DTTs) on foreign direct investment (FDI) after controlling for their relevance in the presence of treaty shopping. DTTs cannot be considered a bilateral issue, but must be viewed as a network, since FDI can flow from home to host country through one or more conduit countries. By accounting for treaty shopping, we calculate the shortest (i.e. the cheapest) tax distance between any two countries allowing the corporate income to be channelled through intermediate jurisdictions. We differentiate between relevant and neutral DTTs - i.e. tax treaties that offer investors a financial advantage - and irrelevant DTTs and use these data to derive two important results. First, only relevant and neutral tax treaties increase bilateral FDI, whereas irrelevant DTTs do not. We can quantify the increase of FDI due to a relvant DTT at around 22%. Second, significant tax reductions due to treaty benefits will lead to an increase in FDI. / Series: WU International Taxation Research Paper Series