OECD Arbitration in Tax Treaty Law

S. VIIEditors’ Preface

This volume in the “Series on International Tax Law” includes the Master’s theses of the full-time students attending the 2017-18 class of the postgraduate LL.M. programme in International Tax Law at WU (Vienna University of Economics and Business). The general topic this year was Arbitration in Tax Treaty Law. The last decades have seen an unprecedented integration of national economies, the emergence of new global players and the growth of global corporations. At the same time, tax competition has intensified, with countries using their tax systems to attract increasingly mobile economic activities. Moreover, multinational enterprises have increasingly made use of the arbitrage opportunities offered by differences in domestic tax laws and the treaty networks of different states. These factors have caused an exponential increase in the number of cross-border tax disputes, as well as the amounts at stake. OECD and EU statistics on tax disputes show that tax administrations are having difficulty coping with this increase, which is an unsatisfactory solution for taxpayers and governments alike.

This is due to the framework governing the resolution of international tax ...