Taxation of Artistes and Sportsmen in International Tax Law

S. 7Preface

The present volume comprises the master theses of the part-time students attending the 2005/2007 class of the postgraduate program „International Tax Law“ at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration (“Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien”).

This year’s general topic is Taxation of Entertainers and Athletes in International Tax Law According to international tax practice taxation of artistes and sportsmen is allocated to the country of performance. As a consequence, Art 17 OECD Model Tax Treaty – being contained in many bilateral tax treaties – states that remunerations derived by artistes or sportsmen, resident in one contracting state from an activity exercised in the other contracting state, can be taxed in that other state. A lot of questions arise in context with the interpretation of this allocation rule. Beside the definition of artistes and sportsmen, it needs to be examined which income is covered by Art 17. According to the leading opinion Art 17 is only applicable to so called performance-related income, which has to be distinguished from other income of an artiste, like eg royalties. This differentiation causes many questions regarding the attribution ...