International Tax

A detailed Summary of International Tax

The accelerating growth in global trade has occasioned the creation of new types of cooperative enterprises. For example, companies routinely form joint ventures or other partnership arrangements to engage in isolated projects or systematically to conduct business. Various forms of limited liability companies are also business and investment vehicles in the global arena. The application of treaties to these companies and vehicles gives rise to problems because tax treaties do not deal with attribution of income -- they only allocate items of income between the two treaty countries. To the extent a treaty allocates income to the residence country of the company or individual earning or receiving the income, the determination to whom this income is taxed (that is, which company or individual is considered to earn or receive the income), is made under the domestic law rules of each of the treaty states. If these rules differ in their application in a given case, conflicting attri!

[3] These treaty application problems have always existed but have been exacerbated in recent years by the growth of elective entity classification in some countries. For example, under U.S. law an entity, whether foreign or domestic,

in many cases is free to choose whether it will be treated as transparent or nontransparent for U.S. tax purposes. /1/ Consequently, an entity may be treated as transparent for U.S. tax purposes and as nontransparent for foreign tax purposes, or vice versa. Also, without such elective classification, inconsistencies result from different domestic entity classification rules. For purposes of discussion, an entity that is treated as transparent for tax purposes in one jurisdiction and as nontransparent in another is referred to as a "hybrid entity." /2/ When there is no classification conflict, a transparent entity may be referred to as a partnership for purposes of discussion.

I. Article 4(1)(d) of 1996 U.S. Model and IRC Section

to the extent that the item is treated for purposes of the

is fiscally transparent under the laws of either Contracting

State shall be considered to be derived by a resident of a State

ax credit, if the source country taxes the entity for the income, and the residence country of the participants taxes these participants, the latter country may not grant double taxation relief because the foreign tax was not imposed on the participant but on the entity.

[7] The formulation accommodates a series of different structures. For example, if the source of income is in one treaty state that treats the entity (which is a resident of a third state) as the recipient of the income, but the participant's residence state taxes the income to the participants, the provision effectively requires the source state to treat the participants as the recipients of the income although under its own domestic l

Some common words found in the essay are:
, IRC Section, Int'l Aug, Convention Partnerships, residence country, company individual, tax purposes, article 41d, model treaty, taxes income, recipient income, irc section, section 894c, vice versa, irc section 894c, 41d 1996 model, income residence country, article 41d 1996, residence country company,

Approximate Word count = 1100
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Miscellaneous