Treaty shopping - Analysis of real cases

Marisa Ramos Gomes / José de Campos Amorim

Keywords

Treaty Shopping; Schemes; Evasion; Abusive Tax Planning; General Anti-abuse Clause.

Abstract

The fight against tax evasion and avoidance has been a constant concern for States, which have adopted a set of measures to prevent unjustified tax reductions, situations of double non-taxation between States or even illegal or abusive tax planning operations. The abusive use of double taxation treaties - treaty shopping - based on loopholes in the law, has been recurrent in competitive trade relations and has contravened domestic laws and international recommendations. This abusive practice occurs in cases where a company takes advantage of a tax benefit that is not expressly provided for in the law for its own benefit. To address this situation, several measures have been put in place to detect and sanction abuses.