16/04/20

INTERNATIONAL TAX: OECD Releases Seven Dispute Resolution Peer Review Reports.

As published on tax-news.com, Wednesday 15 April, 2020.

The OECD has released new stage two peer reviews on seven countries' implementation of the BEPS Action 14 minimum standard, on improving tax dispute resolution, covering Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Sweden.

The reports evaluate the progress made by the seven jurisdictions in implementing any recommendations resulting from the jurisdictions' stage 1 peer review reports. The stage 2 monitoring takes into account any developments in the period April 1, 2017, to September 30, 2018, and the MAP statistics are based on years 2016 and 2017.

According to the OECD, the results from the peer review and peer monitoring process demonstrate positive changes across all seven jurisdictions, although not all show the same level of progress.

Highlights include:

• The Multilateral Instrument was signed by all seven jurisdictions and has already been ratified by five of them, which brings a substantial number of their treaties in line with the standard. In addition there are bilateral negotiations either ongoing or concluded;
• All jurisdictions now have a documented notification/bilateral consultation process to be applied in cases where an objection is considered as being not justified by their competent authority;
• Austria, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and Sweden have added more personnel to the competent authority function and/or made or initiated several organizational improvements (for example, more face-to-face meetings between competent authorities) with a view to handling MAP cases in a more timely, effective, and efficient manner;
• Austria, Germany, and Sweden decreased the amount of time needed to close MAP cases and Liechtenstein and Luxembourg met the sought-after 24-month average timeframe to close MAP cases;
• Austria introduced legislative changes to ensure that all MAP agreements can be implemented notwithstanding domestic time limits if the treaty does not provide for it, while in five of the other six this is already the case; and
• Austria, Germany, Luxembourg, and Sweden have updated or clarified issues in their MAP guidance.

The OECD is now working on a ninth batch of Action 14 peer reviews.