Wolters Kluwer The OECD’s Global Minimum Tax and its Implementation in the EU – A Legal Analysis of Pillar Two in the Light of Tax Treaty and EU Law

Rarely in the history of international tax law have there been so many evolutions in such a short space of time: In a dizzying array of reports, work programmes, consultations and announcements, the OECD, with the active support of the EU, has created a framework for a global minimum tax (Pillar Two or GloBE). In the meanwhile, jurisdictions are faced with the practical difficulties of incorporating an incredibly complex set of rules into their domestic legal systems. This book aims to shed light on the fundamental and technical issues surrounding the global minimum tax. It seeks to unravel the complex ramifications of GloBE’s technical framework and aims to explore the relationship between the OECD’s soft law materials, including the OECD’s GloBE Model Rules and the GloBE Commentary, tax treaties and the EU’s recently adopted GloBE-Directive. The author not only analyses Pillar Two from a technical and a policy perspective but also provides for a comprehensive examination of the compatibility of Pillar Two with tax treaties and EU law. To this end, the analysis also includes practical examples and illustrates solutions to numerous technical and policy issues of Pillar Two. Among the seminal matters covered are the following: History and Background of the global minimum tax discussion. Detailed technical considerations on the design of Pillar Two, including its scope, the determination of both the ‘GloBE Income’ as well as the ‘Adjusted Covered Taxes’ and the computation of the effective tax rate as well as the computation and collection of the final ‘Top-up Tax’ liability, including the application of the QDMTT, IIR, and UTPR. Tax policy implications and deficiencies of the final design of Pillar Two. The relation of Pillar Two to the current distribution of taxing rights under bilateral tax treaties. The analysis includes the compatibility of the QDMTT, IIR, and UTPR with existing tax treaties and the resolution of potential normative conflicts, both between tax treaties and domestic implementations of Pillar Two as well as between tax treaties concluded by EU Member States and the EU’s GloBE-Directive. The role of the GloBE-Directive within the EU’s legal order, including the issue of EU internal and external competence as well as the substantive compatibility of Pillar Two with primary law, such as the fundamental freedoms. Detailed comparisons between the OECD’s GloBE Model Rules and the EU’s GloBE-Directive elucidate common points and deviations. In addition to comprehensive technical considerations, the book also provides a comprehensive tax policy perspective on the global minimum tax. For its unparalleled clarification of the issues alone, this book will prove invaluable to practitioners, tax authorities, policymakers, and academics concerned with the implementation and application of Pillar Two. ‘Valentin Bendlinger’s book is an outstandingly remarkable work on a highly complex topic. The structure, clarity of thinking, and legal argumentation are excellent, and the legal and policy results throughout are profoundly argued. The book successfully ties together broad concepts of international and European (tax) law with highly complex and novel issues of the taxation of multinational enterprises. It should be highlighted that Valentin Bendlinger succeeded in leading the reader from the history and policy through a “jungle” of unprecedented rules to overarching fundamental is