Access to Treaty Benefits

S. 2121. Introduction

The particularities of dispute resolution procedures arising from the application of international tax treaties are constantly being developed and revised as global trade and investment increase. This is due to the necessity to meet the challenges presented by the free movement of goods and services within a global economy. As the number of tax disputes is steadily increasing, the OECD has launched several initiatives to make the Mutual Agreement Procedure (MAP) more accessible. The evolution of these provisions has thus raised questions, inter alia, as to who is legally entitled to initiate dispute resolution proceedings.

The main reason why inquires have arisen around the accessibility of the MAP is that the wording of these provisions promotes their application to a broader ambit than the personal and substantive scopes of the treaty, i.e. Articles 1, 2 and 4 of the OECD Model Tax Convention on Income and Capital 2017 (OECD Model).

One of the main aspects to achieve the effectiveness of the MAP or its supplementary remedy, arbitration procedure, is precisely its personal scope. Understanding for whom and for what situations these types of procedures were created lea...