The main goal of this seminar is to clarify on the basis of case studies what is meant by the concept of abusive application of tax treaties and whether and to what extent the concept of abuse is a domestic one and/or one of treaty law. To the extent that the concept of abuse is a purely domestic one, the question arises how domestic anti-avoidance rules affect double taxation conventions and to what extent one contracting state, for the purpose of taxation, should be prepared to consider the other contracting state's notion of abuse. To the extent that the concept of abuse is one of treaty law, it has to be clarified whether such a concept is known in Treaty law as an unwritten rule or whether the treaties need to include an express provision. Another important question in this respect is whether abusive use of tax treaties by contracting states is possible, e.g. by denying the access to the treaty or by implementing exit charges in the national legislation. What is or can be the role of the OECD in this process and to what extent does EC law innuence the way abuse of tax treaties can be tackled?

This seminar examines the tax effects in a particular jurisdiction of reorganizations taking place in another jurisdiction. The covered reorganizations include mergers, divisions or splits, but also change of legal form (for example, partnership into a company) and transfer of the corporate seat. The seminar focuses on the following: effects in the source state of reorganizations made in the residence state; effects in the residence state of reorganizations made in the source state; impact of EC tax directives on dividends and cross-border reorganizations; and treaty issues.

The OECD Model Tax Convention seminar is a regular feature of the annual IFA Congress. At the 1998 Congress, held in London, the seminar focused on the relationship between tax treaties and domestic laws in OECD member countries. After general surveys by two high-ranking OECD officials of relevant issues and developments in the Working Groups of the OECD's Committee of Fiscal Affairs during the course of the preceding year, the 1998 seminar offered two topics - on the concept of beneficial ownership, and on the characterization of retirement income - which were opened for discussion among panelists and attendees. The discussion shed significant light on the inter-relatedness of cross-border pensions, deferred compensation, and anti-abuse provisions as they appear in bilateral tax treaties, domestic laws, and the Model Convention. This volume reprints in full all the papers presented at this important seminar, along with the subsequent discussions. Practitioners and academics interested in the development and application of the OECD Model Tax Convention should appreciate its valuable insights.

This text contains the proceedings of the IFA Congress Seminar held in 1998. The seminar considered whether the OECD Guidelines had started to influence tax legislation or the practice of Revenue authorities. The seminar reviewed developments in transfer pricing legislation throughout the world. It considered the results of a questionnaire to multinational groups in the Association, and the views of panel members and other participants.

This part of the IFA Seminar Series focuses on two aspects of the definition of permanent establishments: whether and when the provision of services may constitute a permanent establishment concept. The papers delivered at the seminar and the discussions among panelists and congress participants from the floor are reproduced in this booklet.

Presumptive taxation raises both theoretical and practical issues of great importance. From a policy perspective, the most interesting issue is probably to what extent presumptions can be used to simplify the task of administration without fundamentally changing the tax base. From a practical perspective, the fundamental issue raised by presumptive taxation is the trade-off between accuracy and administrability. Using presumptions improves the administrability of a tax while lowering its accuracy, and the question is to what extent the former benefit justifies the latter cost. A related issue is whether presumptive taxation should be considered a permanent supplement to, or even replacement for, the more traditional tax system, or whether it should be viewed as merely a transitional phase until the tax administration is capable of collecting the normal tax without the widespread use of presumptions. The papers collected in this volume reflect the broad diversity of types of presumptive taxation in use today. The overall theme of these papers is that presumptive taxation is a widespread form of taxation, not limited to developing countries, which can be helpful whenever administering the normal tax base is too challenging.

The seminar on development and selected topics of the OECD Model Tax Convention, organized jointly by OECD and IFA, has become a much-appreciated regular feature of IFA Congresses. The present publication gives an account of the papers delivered and the discussions held in the context of this seminar at IFA's Congress in Geneva in September 1996. The first and foremost part of the seminar was constituted as usual by reports delivered by Mr Owens and Mr Luthi on current and upcoming work of the Committee on Fiscal Affairs and in particular, its Working Party No. 1, which is in charge of the Model Convention. For the subsequent panel two subjects regarding interpretation of that Convention were selected, one under its article 14, the other under its article 7.

With the globalization of the world's economies, the elimination of barriers to mobility within trade blocks, and the growth of consolidated multinational businesses, the movement of employees and independent contractors is an obvious feature of modern commercial life. While labour mobility may not yet be as free as capital mobility, the ground is closing. A logical response to the increased mobility of labour would be a gradual convergence of different countries' tax rules applying to expatriates, as nations seek to grapple with the same problem, and a growing harmonization of rules to prevent overlaps and double taxation while closing the lacunae which allow taxpayers to escape taxation completely. As the papers in this volume show, however, the legislatures responsible for drafting tax laws and the tax authorities responsible for administering them are many steps behind commercial developments. Indeed, if anything, the gap is widening. As the papers in this volume examine every aspect of the topic, different, sometimes dramatically different, approaches between jurisdictions are revealed. It is, therefore, to be hoped that governments turn their attention to the problems raised in this volume and explore appropriate paths for unilateral or multilateral resolution of these issues.

In order to celebrate the fact that the Geneva Congress was the 50th IFA Congress, IFA arranged a Jubilee Symposium discussing the future long-term development of tax systems. In this book are published the outline of the symposium, the two key-note papers and the main points of the panel discussion including the chairman's introductions to the different segments of the discussions. The discussion was organized in the following main segments: what new problems do future demographic and economic developments imply; what new tax bases will be available; what will happen with regard to existing main revenue sources; indirect taxes; labour taxation; capital taxation; business taxation; what new means of control will tax administrations get and what new difficulties will they meet; and general conclusions.

One of the developments of the second half of the 20th century has been the formation of economic groupings to foster free trade among sovereign member states. These groupings fall short of being a political union as is the case with a federal state. However, in the area of taxation, there are issues that are common to both economic groupings and federal state with concurrent taxing authorities. The papers in this book were prepared for a panel discussing the subject at the 50th Congress of the International Fiscal Association held in Geneva in September 1996. The panel brought together participants from various parts of the globe. The federal states examined were the United States of America, Australia and Brazil. The European Union was the example of an economic grouping that was not a federal state. The discussions centred on four principles. The first was non-discrimination and the requirement that free trade could only be achieved if the individual member states were prohibited from using local tax measures to inhibit the free flow of goods and services within the zone. The second principle discussed is sometimes referred to as "locational neutrality", which would limit the ability of local taxing authorities to enact taxing measures which, for example, give tax incentives to enterprises of another member state and which result in distortions in the economy. The solution that is often advocated to avoid this result is harmonization of "national coherence". The third principle discussed was the enforcement and collection of taxes. The last principle discussed was the desirability of having the member states of the federal states or economic grouping uniformly bound by international commitments made by the central authority of the federal state or grouping.

This text look at the interaction between accounting, company law and taxation as one of the key issues in corporate regulation. In most legal systems there seem to be, from a more theoretical perspective, rather undeveloped "principles" in this area. This is the case both for statutory provisions and case law. Though the questions are of fundamental importance for the different regulations involved, and are highly complicated, the legal reasoning and debate are very much focused on whether a system is of one kind or another. Either the system has a strong link between accounting and taxation/company law (conformity principle) or it has not.

This seminar focused not only on the technical consideration of secondary aspects but also on the underlying philosophical question: namely, should secondary adjustments be employed at all and, if so, what are the appropriate limitations on their use? While a "corresponding adjustment" may be appropriate in order to avoid double taxation, other secondary adjustments, such as "conforming adjustments" and "reclassification of income" are more problematic. The panellists and audience were asked to consider the implications of secondary adjustments in the context of tax compliance, tax administration, and private contracts. Is it appropriate for the tax administrator to intervene in private transactions to the extent of "deeming" a capital contribution or "deeming" a dividend? Set-offs and corresponding adjustments, as well as about secondary adjustments, such as reclassification of income, are included here. Following the outline are examples and diagrams that explicate the principles explained in the outline, as well as papers prepared by individual panellists.

The question of whether there are internationally recognized anti-avoidance rules that are applied to tax treaties involves two subsidiary questions: whether international law recognizes the concept of abuse of rights, and whether this concept of abuse of rights can be applied to tax treaties. The book then turns to the question of whether provisions included in the tax code that are expressly designed to re-characterize or deal with transactions that are considered to result in unacceptable avoidance of tax under the code can be extended and applied where there is an unacceptable avoidance of tax by virtue of the application of a tax treaty provision.

This is a study of the income tax treatment of fringe benefits. In the first half, a review is given of the theories underlying different fringe benefit income tax rules and the conceptual rules that arise with respect to particular types of benefits. In the second part, a look is taken at the actual rules governing the tax treatment of fringe benefits in the following selected jurisdictions: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brunei, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Paraguay, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.