This document contains four installments of "The Big Picture," a column published in Tax Analysts, International Tax Notes, Volumes 66-68 (2012). The first installment, "Putting Arbitration on the MAP: Thoughts on the New U.N. Model Tax Convention," discusses the addition of mandatory...

Canadian National Report prepared for the Vienna University of Economics and Business, Conference on tax secrecy and transparency, Rust, Austria, July, 2012. The aim of the project is to assess how different countries regard the treatment of tax information and tax secrecy. Topics include the...

Social security is a fundamental part of workers' lives in three spheres: contributions are required, benefits are hoped for, and taxes on benefits may have to be paid. If a worker splits a career between several countries, each of these three spheres is affected. The United States has sought...

Canada is one of many countries where taxpayer rights are becoming an increasingly common topic of discourse among policymakers, practitioners, and the public. Especially in light of recent developments regarding the global expansion of taxpayer information exchange, the role of taxpayer privacy...

Activists around the world seek to expose a global system that fails to tax multinationals adequately and thus deprives governments of needed revenues, with profound effects for development in the world's poorest nations. These tax activists have sparked a global movement, with groups all over...

Apple recently disclosed to shareholders a potentially material impairment to its earnings: an ongoing investigation by the European Commission into Ireland's tax ruling practices. Ireland may be forced to retroactively impose additional taxes on Apple, going back as much as a decade (and...

The IRS recently announced that its mandatory registration regime for paid tax return preparers, struck down in the Loving decision, would henceforth be offered as a voluntary program. But the authors of this program appear to have forgotten that the US system is perfectly global in reach,...

French Abstract: Le thème central du livre est celui de la compétition fiscale qui oppose les États à l'échelle internationale. Abordant cet enjeu, Dietsch présente une solution interdisciplinaire au problème qui touche tant l'économie que le droit et la philosophie. Notre recension...

This chapter for a forthcoming text on investment promotion explains the concept of “luring with tax”. It first lays out in broad strokes how nation states compete with each other for direct and portfolio investment using their tax systems. It then analyzes whether using the tax system as an...

Many countries seek to attract wealthy individuals — their capital, if not actually themselves — with programs that confer residence or citizenship in exchange for specified investments in local property or business ventures. Some programs simply facilitate jumping the immigration line,...