Insights

The introduction of Pillar Two brings unprecedented changes to the international tax landscape, the likes of which haven’t been seen for decades. The rules will create a fundamental shift in the way certain groups are taxed as well as an additional global compliance and reporting obligation for those within scope of the rules.

Over the past few weeks, the Irish Revenue Commissioners (‘Revenue’) has sent in excess of 20,000 letters to non-resident landlords (‘NRL’) and their collection agents, informing them of the upcoming changes to the administration of withholding tax for NRLs. In these letters, Revenue has also detailed the information that landlords will be required to provide to their tenants or collection agents.

On 22nd March 2021, the EU Council introduced "DAC7”, or the 7th Directive (2011/16/EU), on Administrative Cooperation, which enables EU Member States to address some of the perceived negative aspects of the digital economy, by extending the scope of existing exchange of information provisions between Member States, and thus ensuring greater transparency on cross border transactions.

The Forum on Tax Administration, a member group of the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on BEPS (Base Erosion and Profit Shifting), along with other OECD task forces, published a guide to Multilateral Mutual Agreement Procedures multilateral (MAPs) and Advance Pricing Arrangements (APAs). This guide is abbreviated as the ‘MoMA’.

The European Parliament has published its approval of the European Commission’s draft proposal for Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive III (ATAD III) with recommended amendments.

The European Commission held a public consultation in respect of a new proposed corporate tax system referred to as Business in Europe: Framework for Income Taxation (“BEFIT”). According to the Commission, the initiative aims to introduce a single corporate tax rulebook for the EU, based on a common tax base and allocation of taxable profits to Member States based on a pre-defined formula. Once allocated, the taxable profits would be subject to the corporate income tax rates of the relevant Member States.

The European Commission recently issued a proposal to amend the Directive on Administrative Cooperation (DAC) in the form of DAC8. The proposal extends the reporting obligations under the Directive to cover income or revenue streams generated from crypto-assets.

The Irish Revenue (“Revenue”) published updates to their tax and duty manual (“TDM”) containing guidelines for correlative adjustment (“CA”) claims under Ireland’s double tax treaty network. Read summary of the Revenue guidelines.

The European Commission recently published a proposal for a new EU Directive creating a debt-equity bias reduction allowance (‘DEBRA’) and further limitation of the deductibility of interest for corporate tax purposes. This initiative is part of the “EU strategy on business taxation”.

In recent years, there has been a global movement towards increased tax transparency, particularly following a number of high profile financial crises and scandals. Coupled with the growth in the digital economy as well as crypto-assets and e-money in particular, the European Union (EU) has proposed a new Directive on Administrative Cooperation (DAC) known as “DAC8”.

The Irish Transfer Pricing (TP) rules introduced by Finance Act (FA) 2019 apply to Accounting Periods starting on or after 1 January 2020.

As required by the EU Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive (ATAD), Finance Act 2019 introduced wide ranging anti-hybrid mismatch rules into Irish domestic tax legislation. These provisions apply in respect of all payments made or arising on or after 1 January 2020. These rules present some of the most complex tax provisions introduced in recent times introducing unique definitions, terminology and concepts not previously referenced under any other piece of Irish tax legislation.