Should Individual Taxpayer Mutual Agreement Procedures (MAPs) Be Published? Observations and Conclusions From the McCabe Affair

The article comments on the McCabe affair, a dual resident dispute regarding the application of the tie-breaker provision in article 4(2) of the Belgium-United Kingdom Tax Treaty and the lack of disclosure of the mutual agreement procedure in which the competent authorities settled the dispute in favour of the United Kingdom. An analysis is made of the pro's and contra's of the strict confidentiality of MAP proceedings. It is submitted that effective dispute resolution mechanisms do not make sense without emphasis on dispute prevention, and that dispute prevention requires sacrificing some of the strict confidentiality that surrounds dispute resolution through MAP