USCIB’s vice president for taxation policy, Carol Doran Klein, was quoted extensively in a November 30 Bloomberg BNA article on the OECD’s multilateral tax treaty, known as the Multilateral Convention to Implement Tax Treaty-Related Measures to Prevent Base Erosion and Profit Shifting. According to Doran Klein, while many countries are likely to sign on to parts of the treaty, it is unlikely the U.S. will sign on mainly because the multilateral instrument (MLI) “does not have a lot to offer the U.S. Many of the provisions are variations on treaty policies that the U.S. has been implementing for decades.”
Regarding effect on business, Doran Klein said it will be a challenge for companies and their advisers to analyze the changes made by the MLI to individual bilateral treaties. “This is actually a huge issue, because it may be difficult to work through exactly what the new treaty language is.” Doran Klein said she is worried that the tax treaty area will wind up like the trade area. The trade agreements are very difficult to read and understand, because they refer back to other agreements for basic principles. “I believe that the reason they do that is they do not want to open up the fundamentals of the old agreements to complete renegotiation, but it is therefore extremely difficult to understand the obligations.”
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USCIB’s vice president for tax, Carol Doran Klein, has recently been quoted in Bloomberg Government amid uncertainty around the U.S. role in global tax rewrite under President-elect Trump’s administration. Among the various issues, the project on tax base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) will likely not unravel. Doran Klein trusts that the BEPS project will be included in the new administration’s ongoing work, hoping that the U.S. will “continue to participate actively because having the U.S. Treasury at the table makes the rules more likely to reflect the concerns of the U.S. as a government and the U.S. business community.” She goes on to say that there are “many countries that are getting significant benefits from the BEPS project, including things that have already been implemented, such as the reporting requirements.”
Following the United Kingdom vote to leave the European Union, the International Chamber of Commerce has issued the following statement.