OECD Harmful Tax Practices & FDII | International Tax Law Firm
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (“OECD”) has detailed base erosion and profit-shifting (“BEPS”) rules. Among these rules are the OECD rules for countering harmful tax practices (“OECD Harmful Tax Practices Rules”). The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act introduced a new tax concept in the US Internal Revenue Code – foreign-derived intangible income (“FDII”). FDII has become a hot topic in international tax law, especially with respect to whether FDII constitutes a violation of the OECD Harmful Tax Practices Rules.
OECD Harmful Tax Practices Rules and Preferential Tax Regimes
The OECD Harmful Tax Practices Rules require that a preferential tax regime of any OECD nation satisfies the “substantial activities requirement”. In particular, the Intellectual Property income regimes must incorporate the “nexus approach” that limits the entitlement to the preferential tax regime based on the amount of the qualifying research and development costs incurred.
European Position: FDII May Violate OECD Harmful Tax Practices Rules
The Europeans started questioning the FDII’s compliance with the OECD Harmful Tax Practices Rules almost immediately. The main reason for their concern is that the FDII regime does not adopt the nexus approach while allowing US corporations to deduct 37.5% of their deemed intangible income generated abroad by the usage of the US Intellectual Property. The end-result of the FDII rules is the reduction of the effective tax rate on the FDII to a bit over 13%.
The Europeans question whether this result and the FDII rules in general are in conformity with BEPS’ minimum standards and the EU blacklist criteria.
US Position: FDII Does Not Violate OECD Harmful Tax Practices
The Department of the Treasury officials adopted a position exactly opposite to the Europeans (which is not surprising at all). The United States believes that the FDII rules only superficially resemble harmful tax practices, but, in reality, they are very different from traditional preferential tax regimes.
The United States urges the Europeans to consider the FDII tax regime in the context of the overall tax reform that is intended to equalize minimum tax rate that applies to foreign activities of a US corporation regardless of whether the income is earned directly by the US corporation or through it subsidiary (which would be classified as a CFC).
In other words, the FDII rules have a different purpose and effect when one looks at the broader context. They are designed to take away a tax incentive to transfer IP out of the United States into a low-tax foreign subsidiary . Therefore, according to the Department of the Treasury, the FDII tax regime will not create any harm that the OECD Harmful Tax Practices Rules were designed to prevent.
FDII Compliance With the OECD Harmful Tax Practices Rules Will Continue to Be in Dispute
The FDII rules’ compliance with the OECD Harmful Tax Practices Rules will continue to be a matter of debate and conflict between the United States and the EU countries. Additionally, there are very strong objections from the Europeans to the FDII rules from the WTO perspective. This conflict will likely grow into a formal legal dispute between the two economic giants.
Sherayzen Law Office will continue to follow this new dispute between the EU and the United States.