“Taxation Of Offshore Indirect Transfers Of Assets" Report Consults The Public For Amendments

The Platform for Collaboration on Tax reached out to the public for final comments on a revised version of its report on the “Taxation of Offshore Indirect Transfers (OITs) of Assets”.

Taxation of OITs

As a joint effort of the MIF, OECD, UN and World Bank Group, the Platform has undertaken the development of a series of "toolkit" reports to help guide developing countries on the design and implementation of standards for international tax issues of greatest relevance to these countries. The Report on the “Taxation of OITs” is one of those “toolkit” reports. It tackles the tax issue on the sale of an entity located in one country that owns an "immovable" asset located in another country, by a non-resident of the country where the asset is located and provides analysis of and options for the tax treatment of OITs.

Final Comments Sought for the Report

The Platform partners posted the second draft version of the report which is concerning the 19 sets of detailed comments previously received from various groups, including country authorities, civil society organizations, and the private sector. Together with the new draft, a companion document is also released which is systematically detailing the comments received, identifying the parties who made them, and describing how the new draft responds to those comments. The Platform gives the following questions to consider when reviewing the new version:

• Has the draft better clarified the economic rationale for taxing such transfers by offshore indirect owners?
• The new draft does not express a preference for either of the described legislative approaches to taxing these transfers - is this made clear?
• Does the draft adequately reduce any perceived emphasis on such offshore transfers as constituting tax avoidance, and does it make clear that the economic rationale for taxing them does not come as an anti-avoidance device?

Any comments should be sent by e-mail no later than 24 September 2018 to GlobalTaxPlatform@worldbank.org, a common comment box for all the Platform organisations.

Source: The World Bank