The Inclusive Framework on BEPS has released additional interpretative guidance to give certainty to tax administrations and MNE Groups alike on the implementation of Country-by-Country (CbC) Reporting (BEPS Action 13).

On 3 July 2018, interested parties were invited to provide comments on a discussion draft on financial transactions, which deals with follow-up work in relation to Actions 8-10 (“Assure that transfer pricing outcomes are in line with value creation”) of the BEPS Action Plan. The OECD is grateful to the commentators for their input and now publishes the public comments received.

Today, Saudi Arabia signed the Multilateral Convention to Implement Tax Treaty Related Measures to Prevent Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (the Convention). Saudi Arabia becomes the 84th jurisdiction to join the Convention, which now covers over 1,400 bilateral tax treaties.

Governments need to raise carbon prices much faster if they are to meet their commitments on cutting emissions and slowing the pace of climate change under the Paris Agreement, according to a new OECD report.

Tax officials from 21 jurisdictions met this week in Yangzhou, China, to share experiences from the first year of country-by-country reporting and explore how information can be used most effectively in the tax risk assessment of MNE groups. The workshop also included representatives of large MNE groups headquartered or with major operations in China and the Asia-Pacific region.

Australia, France, Japan and the Slovak Republic have deposited their instrument of ratification or acceptance for the Multilateral Convention to Implement Tax Treaty Related Measures to Prevent Base Erosion and Profit Shifting with the OECD’s Secretary-General, therewith underlining their strong commitment to prevent the abuse of tax treaties and BEPS by multinational enterprises.

An innovative international co-operation initiative that deploys qualified experts in developing countries to strengthen their ability to effectively tax multinational enterprises has achieved significant milestones over the past year, according to a new annual report.

The four partner organisations to the Platform for Collaboration on Tax (PCT) will discuss critical challenges and opportunities for mobilising domestic resources to meet countries’ development priorities, at the upcoming IMF-World Bank annual meetings in Bali, Indonesia.

Members of the Inclusive Framework on BEPS have committed to report their MAP statistics pursuant to an agreed reporting framework and to publish them on a yearly basis. The 2017 MAP statistics are now available covering 85 jurisdictions and almost all MAP cases worldwide. They contain detailed information on each jurisdiction as well as aggregated global information.

The Global Forum published today seven peer review reports assessing compliance with the international standard on transparency and exchange of information on request (EOIR).

As part of its work to preserve the integrity of the CRS, the OECD has published the results of its analysis of over 100 CBI/RBI schemes offered by CRS-committed jurisdictions, identifying those schemes that potentially pose a high-risk to the integrity of CRS.

Since the release of the guidance, Monaco has provided additional information with respect to its residence and migration requirements confirming that information on relevant applicants is exchanged with all existing jurisdictions of residence.

The OECD and Papua New Guinea's Internal Revenue Commission agreed today to gear up efforts to tackle tax base erosion and profit shifting by multinational enterprises in Papua New Guinea, through participation in the OECD/UNDP Tax Inspectors Without Borders initiative.

The OECD’s Centre for Tax Policy and Administration and the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, Metals and Sustainable Development (IGF) are collaborating to address some of the challenges developing countries face in raising revenue from their mining sectors. Under this partnership, a series of practice notes and tools are being developed for governments.

The OECD is pleased to announce that jurisdictions are taking further action to prevent the misuse of RBI/CBI schemes by account holders by putting in place an exchange of information mechanism that will ensure that the information on applicants of RBI/CBI schemes will be made available to their jurisdiction(s) of tax residence.

Countries must step up work to ensure that tax authorities and anti-corruption authorities can effectively co-operate in the fight against tax evasion, bribery, and other forms of corruption, according to a joint OECD/World Bank report.

The OECD and the Inter-American Center of Tax Administrations (CIAT) hosted today the high-level event "Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Implementation: Strategic importance, challenges and opportunities" in Lisbon, Portugal.

Ecuador today signed the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters, making it the 126th jurisdiction to join the world’s leading instrument for boosting transparency and combating cross-border tax evasion. The Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement on Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information (CRS MCAA) was also signed.

Africa has sustained gains in domestic resource mobilisation made since 2000, as tax revenues remained stable in 2016, according to Revenue Statistics in Africa 2018. Providing internationally comparable data for 21 participating countries, the report finds that the average tax-to-GDP ratio was 18.2% in 2016, the same level as in 2015, which represents a strong improvement from 13.1% in 2000.

Over 60 delegates from 16 countries, international and regional organisations, business, civil society and academia gathered in Yerevan, Armenia on 7 - 9 November 2018 for a regional meeting of the Inclusive Framework on BEPS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Global cooperation to fight tax evasion and avoidance has grown rapidly over the past few years. Tax Transparency and Exchange of Information between tax authorities about financial assets and activities of their taxpayers abroad has proved to be a valuable tool in this fight.

This new guidance presents a clear overview of the modifications to tax treaties resulting from the Multilateral BEPS Convention which entered into force on 1 July 2018. A Secretariat note, also released today, clarifies the entry into effect rules for tax treaties of jurisdictions that deposited their ratification instruments last September.

The OECD is gathering input for the Stage 1 peer reviews of Brazil, Bulgaria, China (People's Republic of), Hong Kong (China), Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Russian Federation and Saudi Arabia, and invites taxpayers to submit input on specific issues relating to access to MAP, clarity and availability of MAP guidance and the timely implementation of MAP agreements for each of these jurisdictions using the taxpayer input questionnaire.

International efforts to curb harmful tax practices and prevent the misuse of preferential tax regimes are having a tangible impact worldwide, according to new data released today by the OECD.

Twenty-eight officials participated in the inaugural “VAT/GST Fraud Investigations” course at the OECD Latin America Academy for Tax and Financial Crime Investigation last week in Buenos Aires.

As part of its efforts to maintain the integrity of the Common Reporting Standard (CRS), the OECD has been working closely with Panama over the last weeks to ensure that any risks created by its Residence by Investment (RBI) programmes are effectively addressed.

The Global Forum held its annual meeting in Uruguay on 20-22 November, bringing together 220 delegates from 84 jurisdictions and 12 International organisations to strengthen further the international community’s fight against tax evasion. The meeting marked the widespread rollout of automatic exchange of financial account of information.

This week, in the margins of the 11th Global Forum meeting held in Punta del Este, Uruguay Minister of Economy and Finance Danilo Astori led a discussion with Ministers, high level representatives and officials from Latin America on the use of information exchange to combat tax fraud and corruption.

This new report shows that tax-to-GDP ratios fell in most of the 16 Asian and Pacific economies covered by the report between 2015-16 due to a combination of policy reforms and decreasing natural resource prices.

The Convention will enter into force for Jamaica on 1 March 2019 and will generally apply from 1 January 2020, although it may apply for earlier periods between signatories if agreed to and applies in relation to any period regarding criminal matters.

This report contains two parts. Part I reports on the activities and achievements in the OECD’s international tax agenda. Part II reports on the activities and achievements of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes.

International cooperation and collective action are critical to tackling the world’s major challenges, OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría said following the G20 Leaders’ Summit held in Buenos Aires amid heightened trade tensions but at which important advances were made on a number of priorities of Argentina’s presidency.

Today, Qatar signed the Multilateral Convention to Implement Tax Treaty Related Measures to Prevent Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (the Convention), becoming the 85th jurisdiction to join the Convention, which now covers nearly 1,500 bilateral tax treaties.

Tax revenues in advanced economies have continued to increase, with taxes on companies and personal consumption representing an increasing share of total tax revenues, according to new OECD research.

The purpose of the CbC MCAA is to set forth rules and procedures as may be necessary for Competent Authorities of jurisdictions implementing BEPS Action 13 to automatically exchange CbC Reports prepared by the Reporting Entity of an MNE Group and filed on an annual basis with the tax authorities of the jurisdiction of tax residence of that entity with the tax authorities of all jurisdictions in which the MNE Group operates.

As part of continuing efforts to improve tax transparency, the Inclusive Framework on BEPS has now assessed 92 individual jurisdictions' progress in spontaneously exchanging information on tax rulings, in accordance with Action 5 of the OECD/G20 BEPS package.

The Czech health care system is doing well in terms of health outcomes compared to other Central East European economies that inherited similar health systems after the transition and has been converging to OECD averages.

OECD Deputy Secretary-General Ludger Schuknecht and Pascal Saint-Amans, Director of the Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, met today in Paris with Mr. Menno Snel, State Secretary for Finance in The Netherlands, for wide-ranging discussions on international co-operation in the field of taxation, notably as concerns tackling tax evasion.

Belize has signed the Multilateral Convention to Implement Tax Treaty Related Measures to Prevent BEPS, becoming the 86th jurisdiction to join the Convention, which now covers almost 1500 bilateral tax treaties. Yesterday, Monaco deposited its instrument of ratification for the Convention with the OECD’s Secretary-General.

Today, the OECD, the South African Revenue Service (SARS) and National Treasury of South Africa (National Treasury) signed a Memorandum of Co-operation (MoC), agreeing to continue to work together in the area of taxation. The MOC is in place until December 2023.

Taxes paid by companies remain a key source of government revenues, especially in developing countries, despite the worldwide trend of falling corporate tax rates over the past two decades, according to a new report from the OECD.

The Task Force on Tax and Development organised this conference on the role of tax morale in development which introduced new research undertaken by the OECD on the drivers of tax morale in developing countries.

Further progress has been made by the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on BEPS in implementation of BEPS measures against harmful tax practices (BEPS Action 5).

The international community has made important progress toward addressing the tax challenges arising from digitalisation of the economy and has agreed to continue working multilaterally towards achievement of a new consensus-based long-term solution in 2020, the OECD announced today.

Today, at the OECD Headquarters in Paris, H.E. Aichetou Mint M’Haiham, Ambassador of Mauritania to France, signed the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters (the Convention) in the presence of the OECD Deputy Secretary-General Ludger Schuknecht. Mauritania is the 127th jurisdiction to join the Convention.

Indonesia’s government needs more revenue to fund spending that can boost GDP growth, raise well-being and reduce poverty.

Progress continues with the implementation of the BEPS package, as the OECD releases additional peer review reports assessing countries’ efforts to implement the Action 6 and Action 14 minimum standards as agreed under the OECD/G20 BEPS Project.

The OECD is now gathering input for the BEPS Action 14 Stage 1 peer reviews of Brunei, Curaçao, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Jersey, Monaco, San Marino and Serbia, and invites taxpayers to submit input on specific MAP-related issues by 19 March 2019.

On 5 March, Morocco and Cameroon launched a new TIWB South-South bilateral programme in Yaoundé. The programme, a first between two Francophone African countries, will see Moroccan tax audit experts providing support to Cameroon.

On 13 February 2019, interested parties were invited to provide comments on key issues identified in a public consultation document on possible solutions to the tax challenges arising from the digitalisation of the economy. The OECD is grateful to the commentators for their input and now publishes the public comments received.