Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-2024

Abstract

In a recent column, Tax Notes’ Martin Sullivan asked whether a country that wishes to neutralize the effect of pillar 2 on its investment incentives can get around the OECD prohibition on a multinational enterprise receiving what amounts to a refund of the pillar 2 tax it pays to that country. He writes that:

It would make a mockery of the pillar 2 taxation system if an investment hub imposed a 15 percent minimum tax on a company — thereby shielding profit in that hub from other jurisdictions’ pillar 2 tax — and then, through a separate mechanism, unconditionally returned the new revenue dollar-for-dollar to the taxpaying company. Pillar 2 model rules prevent that. But what if the benefits offsetting the tax are not dollar-for-dollar but instead merely approximate the revenue raised from the new tax?

And what if it’s easy for a company to satisfy the conditions for receiving the benefit — perhaps by doing business the same way it did before? Should the collateral benefits — whether deliberately or by coincidence offsetting the burden of the new tax — prevent other countries’ imposition of pillar 2 tax on investment hub profits?

Available for download on Saturday, July 22, 2034


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