Building a Framework for a Post-BEPS World

Abstract

The OECD base erosion and profit-shifting project (BEPS) presents a unique opportunity for the international tax regime. BEPS is taking on an immense challenge, with 15 separate action items on such issues as the digital economy, hybrid mismatches, treaty abuse, intangibles transfer pricing, and information sharing. Dealing with any one of these issues has proven difficult to deal with in the past, but if the reason for these past difficulties has been that these issues are inexorably intertwined, addressing them as part of a comprehensive overhaul not only makes sense, but could also prove crucial to BEPS’s ultimate success. If the problems confronting BEPS truly represents a fundamental breakdown of the infrastructure of the existing international tax regime itself, what is needed is a new intellectual framework for BEPS to be a success.

This article attempts to sketch the outlines of that framework for a post-BEPS international tax regime. This is not intended to defend any particular proposal or resolve any specific BEPS action item. Rather, it is intended to introduce one possible way to integrate the disparate goals of BEPS into a single, coherent, intellectual framework. Ideally, the presence of a clearly defined intellectual framework itself could contribute to making BEPS (or any similar project) a long-term success, regardless of any specific proposals emerging from it.

Keywords: international tax, OECD, BEPS

JEL Classification: K34