Responsible International Tax Planning, Compliance and Administration

Full course description

The impact of taxes on society can be very large, both from a financial perspective and a distributive effect. From a financial perspective, taxes (especially in western countries) place a heavy burden on countries’ economies. The distributive effect comes from the usual nonproportionality of taxes. That is, taxes often are either progressive (increasing tax rates with higher levels of income) or regressive (decreasing tax rates with higher levels of income), thus distorting net income levels across economic parties.

Many, if not all, taxes affect our everyday lives. However, it is neither desirable nor possible to discuss all different types of taxes within a course. Therefore, this course will focus on those taxes that affect (the economic behavior of) companies. As we will also concentrate our attention to (the somewhat larger) international companies, the focus will thus be on the corporate income tax. Attention will also be paid to withholding taxes on e.g., interest, dividends, and royalties. In the current era corporate and related taxes also have the attention of states, the EU and OECD and UN. After BEPS states have a lot more tools to challenge the tax planning corporates apply. The question is to what extent there is a balance between taxing rights and taxpayer rights.

Tax planning is a core activity for many corporations operating internationally. Tax is considered a cost by most companies, which should, at least for many tax directors, be managed and (preferably) minimized. The other side of the coin is that tax collection is important in every society, if only to pay for a lot of the provisions provided to the public. Not too long-ago IMF suggested introducing a temporary “Tax for the Rich” to tax wealth individuals and companies that ‘benefitted’ from the Covid-19 pandemic so that governments can pay the Covid-19 bill. In 2022 the EU agreed on an excess profit tax on energy companies since their profits went sky-high because of the Ukraine war. Minimizing the effective tax rate of companies is, in this respect, not (always) benefitting society and may therefore not benefit that specific company and the others that are part of that society. Paying your "fair share" is a phrase that is commonly used in this respect. Where tax practitioners nowadays have a feeling about the content of this phrase, a clear definition can still not be noticed, nor can clear boundaries be found. Although one could argue that by being compliant to the (tax) law you can be assumed to pay your fair share, there are voices that ague otherwise. But in the current world it appears to be difficult to 4 be compliant since there are many new rules affecting the same situations but with different effects. Also, the recent deviation between UN and OECD demonstrates that the world is getting more divided from a tax perspective instead of being more united which we expected after the 2015 BEPS plans.

Because of developments in the international environment, the phrase ‘paying your fair share’ is currently under renewed attention. The aspect of paying a “fair share” which is impossible to define, is despite this adopted by individuals and journalists living in societies where multinational enterprises carry out their businesses. Multinationals are more and more requested to disclose their tax (planning) structures, give insight in their tax strategy and, subsequently, their (tax-)contribution to society.

The OECD has issued several deliverables after a process of developing measures to prevent Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (“BEPS”), a process initiated by the G20. The results of the BEPS-project are expected to have an impact on tax (planning) behavior of multinationals. The extent of that impact is dependent on the level of adoption of the results by OECD-member states.

This course will investigate how tax planning affects the taxes borne by economic parties, especially companies. To achieve this goal, this course will investigate a) how (corporate income) taxes affect economic decisions; and b) how tax planning strategies and techniques can be used to influence the effective tax rate and the corporate tax bill. This course will also pay attention to the question whether all the developments of last decade affects taxpayer rights. More and more companies which try to be compliant suffer from double or triple taxation due to the divergence of tax rules and the different opinions on relevant tax topics (e.g., avoidance), even without harmonized systems like within the EU.

As, due to the recent developments, this is no longer an “underground game” being played by a select group of multinationals and their advisors we will add an additional flavor to the course by also addressing the aspect of Fiscal Ethics (in relation to tax planning and paying your “fair share”) to this course. But Fiscal Ethics is not just an interest in companies, also countries play a role here. Challenging avoidance (so no evasion) by following a parallel route based on 5 levying criminal charges as some member states do, is a form of blackmailing the company which affects taxpayer rights a lot in a negative way.

Course Design

This course will not only use standard educational formats like one-way lectures. In addition, it will use interactive formats, like group discussions and papers. To achieve this, the course will be structured around several case descriptions by which tax concepts will be explained. These often real live case descriptions which will be explained in the lectures, will be used as the starting point for each group discussion. Further several societal developments will be discussed during the class which will also return in the groups. This year the grade will consist of the average of three paper gradings. The subject of the papers will be discussed in the plenary session.