Most national taxation regimes afford certain privileges to non-governmental non-profit organizations of public benefit. However, cross-border extension of such privileges has failed to materialize in any significant way, despite various efforts and the existence of model treaty provisions and even draft NGO multilateral tax treaties. Although experts tend to oppose harmonization on the grounds that international privilege would sink to the lowest national level there does seem to be general agreement that tax incentives to encourage the cross-border activity of public benefit organizations should be clarified and augmented. The expert authors whose work is assembled in this book offer rich perspectives on this issue. Their various analyses include the following: detailed discussion of the objections of principle commonly advanced by states; the role of discrimination legislation in strategies to advance cross-border privilege; the continuing failure of political will to achieve changes in this area of taxation; the potential of reciprocal unilateral action; tax treaties and non-tax treaties with tax-related provisions; multilateral initiatives (OECD, UN, EU, Council of Europe, World Bank, regional treaties); and Documentation (International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation). Quite apart from its importance as an in-depth study of a taxation issue of significant social value, The Tax Treatment of NGOs will be of great assistance to NGOs and their supporters and benefactors. It opens the way to more vigorous lobbying power for the NGO community to influence changes in taxation law and policy.

This collection contains sixteen national reports and general discussion on the subject, dealing with limitations of actions, or "extinctive prescription", as the subject is usually called in civil law jurisdictions. This is both a highly technical and a highly political topic. The book focuses on the political aspects of extinctive prescription, specifically, how long should prescription periods run, as of what event, and interrupted by which circumstances for example. The trend in modern legislation has been to shorten the periods of prescription whilst occurrences in biology and medicine, however, have led to proposals to lengthen the limitation periods once more. The reports discuss the situation in Europe, Latin America, and North America, and display a comparative nature.