Rosenzweig – Book 1 (Do Not Delete)4/7/2024 7:09 PM
BEPS: Endgame ADAM H. ROSENZWEIG* Abstract By all accounts the international tax regime is facing a transformational moment marking the end of international tax avoidance by multinational corporations through a concerted global effort at tax reform spearheaded by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (“OECD”) under its Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (“BEPS”) project. BEPS initially began as a technical project to identify and propose remedies for many of the more complex and persistent planning techniques in cross-border taxation. After a series of remarkably successful breakthroughs, however, the scope of BEPS grew into a much more ambitious project with the OECD identifying fifteen specific action items it would pursue with the ultimate goal being the emergence of a single set of global rules and principles agreed to by nearly every country in the world. To this end, in 2022 the OECD announced that over one hundred countries had entered into an agreement to establish a global minimum corporate tax—the first of its kind. Both the U.S. Secretary of Treasury and the President of the United States hailed the agreement as the beginning of the end of international corporate tax evasion forever. Despite these remarkable successes, however, BEPS has also faced a number of delays and disappointments throughout the process. For the most part, especially given its recent successes, these setbacks have been dismissed as minor “speed bumps” along the way toward an ultimate comprehensive final agreement. But what if this was not the case? What if these small but recurring setbacks actually comprise a feature of the BEPS negotiations rather than a bug? In such case, * Professor of Law, Washington University in Saint Louis. I would like to thank Rebecca Hollander-Blumoff and the participants of the Washington University Faculty Speaker Series for their helpful comments and feedback on earlier versions of this article. Any errors are solely those of the author.
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