Anti-Abuse Rules in International Tax Law and their Interactions

1. Introduction

One of the aims of international tax law is to define taxing rights of countries over income earned by taxpayers (whether individuals or legal entities) in various jurisdictions and address situations of potential double taxation as well as potential double non-taxation. The term beneficial ownership (“BO”) is, at least first glance, used in an international tax law context to determine in the hands of which taxpayer an income should be subject to tax.

S. 148The term BO is used not only in the OECD Model Convention (“OECD MC”) as well as in the UN Model Tax Convention but also in EU law and domestic law of individual countries worldwide addressing taxation of income. It is also used in other (possibly related) contexts associated with tax transparency and anti-money laundering.

The aim of this text is to analyse the BO in the light of anti-abuse rules, more precisely to look into the interaction of the BO concept under double taxation treaties (more precisely under the OECD MC) under EU law and selected local administrative and court practice(s) with other anti-abuse rules. The analysis covers the development of the BO concept as an allocation rule in the context of the prev...