Rarely in the history of international tax law have there been so many evolutions in such a short space of time: In a dizzying array of reports, work programmes, consultations and announcements, the OECD, with the active support of the EU, has created a framework for a global minimum tax (Pillar Two or GloBE). In the meanwhile, jurisdictions are faced with the practical difficulties of incorporating an incredibly complex set of rules into their domestic legal systems. This book aims to shed light on the fundamental and technical issues surrounding the global minimum tax. It seeks to unravel the complex ramifications of GloBE’s technical framework and aims to explore the relationship between the OECD’s soft law materials, including the OECD’s GloBE Model Rules and the GloBE Commentary, tax treaties and the EU’s recently adopted GloBE-Directive. The author not only analyses Pillar Two from a technical and a policy perspective but also provides for a comprehensive examination of the compatibility of Pillar Two with tax treaties and EU law. To this end, the analysis also includes practical examples and illustrates solutions to numerous technical and policy issues of Pillar Two. Among the seminal matters covered are the following: History and Background of the global minimum tax discussion. Detailed technical considerations on the design of Pillar Two, including its scope, the determination of both the ‘GloBE Income’ as well as the ‘Adjusted Covered Taxes’ and the computation of the effective tax rate as well as the computation and collection of the final ‘Top-up Tax’ liability, including the application of the QDMTT, IIR, and UTPR. Tax policy implications and deficiencies of the final design of Pillar Two. The relation of Pillar Two to the current distribution of taxing rights under bilateral tax treaties. The analysis includes the compatibility of the QDMTT, IIR, and UTPR with existing tax treaties and the resolution of potential normative conflicts, both between tax treaties and domestic implementations of Pillar Two as well as between tax treaties concluded by EU Member States and the EU’s GloBE-Directive. The role of the GloBE-Directive within the EU’s legal order, including the issue of EU internal and external competence as well as the substantive compatibility of Pillar Two with primary law, such as the fundamental freedoms. Detailed comparisons between the OECD’s GloBE Model Rules and the EU’s GloBE-Directive elucidate common points and deviations. In addition to comprehensive technical considerations, the book also provides a comprehensive tax policy perspective on the global minimum tax. For its unparalleled clarification of the issues alone, this book will prove invaluable to practitioners, tax authorities, policymakers, and academics concerned with the implementation and application of Pillar Two. ‘Valentin Bendlinger’s book is an outstandingly remarkable work on a highly complex topic. The structure, clarity of thinking, and legal argumentation are excellent, and the legal and policy results throughout are profoundly argued. The book successfully ties together broad concepts of international and European (tax) law with highly complex and novel issues of the taxation of multinational enterprises. It should be highlighted that Valentin Bendlinger succeeded in leading the reader from the history and policy through a “jungle” of unprecedented rules to overarching fundamental issues of how the new taxation framework is to be placed in the international and European legal order.’ – Prof. DDr Georg Kofler, LLM (NYU), Vienna University of Economics and Business.

Global Minimum Tax at a glance The OECD ́s Global Minimum Tax is amongst the most discussed topics in the recent international tax law debate. The book provides for more than 25 individual but co-ordinated essays on multiple relevant topics on Pillar Two is structured as follows: General Topics including the legal status of the GloBE Model Rules, their relation to tax treaties and EU Law, the GloBE STTR, the specifics of jurisdictional blending, their impact on tax competition and on tax incentives Scoping topics including the computation of the EUR 750 million threshold, the definition of MNE Group, territorial allocation of CEs and excluded entities Charging provisions, including GloBE ́s rule order and the impact of the GloBE Model Rules on minority shareholders Computation of GloBE Income and Loss, including contributions on the adjustment of permanent differences and specifics of dividends and equity gains for purposes of the base determination Computation of Adjusted Covered Taxes, including the notion of covered taxes, the recognition of temporal differences and the territorial allocation of covered taxes Top-up Tax computation including contributions on the general correspondence of covered taxes and GloBE Income, the Substance-Based Income Exclusion, the specifics of Investment and Minority-Owned Constituent Entities and the general role of the QDMTT within the framework of Pillar Two Selected topics on the administration of GloBE, e.g., Safe Harbors and the identification of the taxpayer within the framework of Pillar Two

Although still under development, Pillar 2 of the OECD Global Anti-Base Erosion Model Rules is already posing significant challenges for taxation authorities worldwide. Intended to establish a floor in the possibilities for countries to compete for corporate investment with each other in the field of corporate income taxation, the Pillar 2 Rules arising from the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework have been agreed on by 140 countries. This book provides the first in-depth survey of the implications of the Rules for all stakeholders, with detailed annotations by nineteen renowned experts in the field of multinational corporate taxation who describe the relevant provisions with examples and considerations addressing their scope, functioning, and interaction. Undergirded by a comprehensive discussion of the Rules, their technical operation, and the administrative guidance provided by OECD, topics covered include the following: definitions of tax terms for Pillar 2 purposes; computation of income or loss, adjusted covered taxes, effective tax rate, and top-up tax; jurisdictional blending and loss offsets; effect of corporate restructurings and holding structures; excluded categories of income; carve-out opportunities under the Substance-Based Income Exclusion (SBIE); transitional country-by-country and time-limited safe harbours; and differences and interactions between the OECD Global Anti-Base Erosion (GloBE) and both the EU Pillar 2 Directive and the US Global Intangible Low-Taxed Income (GILTI) regimes. It has been estimated that the GloBE reform would produce a worldwide additional tax revenue of USD 200 billion annually. It has thus become imperative for taxation authorities, tax practitioners, and multinational corporate counsel to become as aware as possible of the intricacies of the Pillar 2 Rules, and for this reason, this detailed discussion and analysis will be greatly appreciated by taxation professionals worldwide.

Bringing together leading experts in the field of tax law, this book comprehensively analyses the new global minimum taxation regime for multinational companies. Not only does it consider this unprecedented diplomatic achievement in its historic, economic and political context, but the book also explores the intricate technical detail of the GloBE model rules.

This groundbreaking book – a major contribution addressing the imperative to find a solution to what has been labelled as the Tax Challenges Arising from the Digitalization of the Economy – provides the first comprehensive analysis of Article 12B of the UN Model Double Taxation Convention 2021, a model distributive rule for ‘Income from Automated Digital Services’. In extensive detail, the author thoroughly examines the article’s underlying principles, its individual provisions, the tax policy context that surrounds it, how it might be applied, and what its strengths and weaknesses are. The author’s analysis (which includes a paragraph-by-paragraph discussion of the article and examines its Commentary in extensive detail) covers all aspects of the article and its significance, including the following: how to reconcile the approach taken by Article 12B UN Model Convention with general principles underlying the coordination of taxing claims; legal and tax policy relation to other provisions of the UN Model Convention and to the OECD/Inclusive Framework Pillar One/Amount A; influence of developing countries in forums of international tax coordination; the value of country positions and minority views in Model Conventions; categories of digital services; the novel option for annual net taxation in Article 12B(3) UN Model Convention; and the proposal for a UN fast-track instrument. It is not surprising that the ubiquitous digitalization of the economy has led to a widespread sense of unease in the international tax community. Practitioners and policymakers who face this issue in their day-to-day work will greatly appreciate this book’s clear explanation of how Article 12B UN Model Convention works and benefit from its consideration of how it is likely to be implemented in the international double taxation treaty network.

An in-depth analysis of the specific aspects of justice, equality and tax law "Justice, Equality and Tax Law" is a topic that is both old and new at the same time. Even if the society changes, the demands that tax needs to be just and equal seem to be immutable. What changes, of course, is the perception of the content of those demands. International taxation post-BEPS has been fraught with new challenges that warranted urgent responses. These challenges were mainly provoked by the unprecedented rise of the digital economy which truly marked a change in the way business is conducted, how value is created, and how goods and services are produced and consumed. Digitalization, in turn, had repercussions on all aspects of taxation - direct taxation, indirect taxation, and even tax procedures. For instance, the quest for more justice and equality in profit taxes was the reason why, in October 2021, a historical deal based on a two-pillar solution to address the tax challenges arising from the digitalization of the economy was negotiated within the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting and agreed upon by 137 member countries. It was also the motive behind the shift from a typical vendor collection model to an intermediary collection model supported by centralized registration points in indirect taxes, notably the VAT/GST. Abundant data from the European Union or the OECD signalized an ever-increasing gap between expected VAT revenues and VAT actually collected, making it obvious that the classical system of VAT/GST collection was unable to respond to challenges posed by the digital economy. Therefore, new solutions based on the participation of digital platforms as intermediaries had been introduced. Finally, new technologies, such as blockchain, paved new avenues in enhancing tax compliance. In this context, this volume entitled "Justice, Equality, and Tax Law" contains not only a selection of the best master ́s theses of the full-time LL.M. programme in 2021/2022 but also represents an in-depth analysis of various aspects of this evergreen topic.