HomeWHICHWhich Source Of Investor Income Is Susceptible To Double Taxation

Which Source Of Investor Income Is Susceptible To Double Taxation

A. Importance of International Taxation

International trade has existed since the birth of nations, but there has been an accelerating growth not only in trade but also in finance and investment since the end of World War II. This growth has far outstripped the general growth in the world economy. One important cause has been the gradual removal of barriers to international trade through the various negotiating rounds of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (the GATT, which as of 1995 is administered by the World Trade Organization, or WTO). For finance, the removal of exchange controls in most industrial countries, commencing from the floating of exchange rates in the early 1970s, has been a notable factor leading to the globalization of world capital and financial markets. The international organizations most involved here have been the IMF and the Bank for International Settlements.

In relation to investment, the main multilateral push is yet to come. In recent years, the foreign direct investment laws of investee countries and the investment rules for various institutional investors in investor countries have been liberalized, and bilateral investment treaties have grown. The Multilateral Agreement on Investment is currently under negotiation in the OECD. When this treaty is concluded in the near future, it is proposed to extend its regime worldwide through the cooperative efforts of the OECD and the WTO, which will see further global relaxation of investment controls. In addition, the end of the cold war has freed up the international transfer of technology, and labor is also becoming more mobile, especially for high-cost services (such as professional, management, and consulting services) and within trade blocs.

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Overlaying all these developments and substantially contributing to many of them are the great advances in international communications and computer technology.

It is a corollary of this growth in international transactions that international tax laws (along with international trade, finance, and commercial laws) have become more significant to each country’s legal system. Moreover, as restrictions in other areas are reduced or removed, taxation is brought increasingly into focus, but there is a significant difference in the tax case. Whereas it may be possible to liberalize or abolish rules in other areas affecting international transactions, taxation needs to be retained in some form for the financing of governments. The international challenge for taxation is the development of a system that does not act as an undue impediment to international transactions while protecting the revenue of each state.

Although this challenge is present for all kinds of taxes, this chapter deals with the income tax.4 The income tax is usually the major source of revenue and the most complex tax in industrial countries. For both these reasons, the tax causes the most problems in the international arena. In developing and transition countries, the income tax may not be the most important tax in terms of revenue, but it is looked to as serving that role in the future and it will also generally be the tax of greatest concern to foreign investors and expatriate personnel.

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