With accusations of cosying up to multinationals and engaging in a race to the bottom, there is an assumption that tax competition is bad. But panellists at the Oxford Business School’s Summer Conference on Tax Competition and BEPS questioned whether the perception matches reality.
The OECD’s project on providing ways to tackle base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) is at the forefront of the minds of tax directors and other stakeholders all over the world right now. But different jurisdictions have different approaches and different agendas in terms of what they want OECD outcomes to look like.
Arun Jaitley, the Indian finance minister, has delegated responsibility for oversight of the Indian tax disputes involving Vodafone because he advised the company on tax issues during his legal career.
Christian Aid, ActionAid, Global Witness and the Financial Transparency Coalition have accused G8 countries of failing to live up to the promises they made on tax and transparency a year ago at the Lough Erne summit in Northern Ireland.
Arun Jaitley, India’s new finance minister, delivers his first Budget speech at the beginning of next month and taxpayers in India, as well as potential foreign investors, are hopeful of a general simplification of the country’s indirect tax system and specific detail on the implementation of the goods and services tax (GST) regime.
Taxpayers in Spain got some welcome news last week when the government announced a tax reform package, including a cut in the corporate tax rate, by two percentage points to 28% next year, and another – to 25% – from the start of 2016. Tax executives from BMW, Iberdrola and Repsol share their initial reactions to the reform with International Tax Review, with all wanting more information before they could be completely satisfied with the measures.
