Pearse Doherty
Question:30. Deputy Pearse Doherty asked the Minister for Finance his plans to implement the recent OECD BEPS report, including through legislation. [37047/14]
View answerThursday, 2 October 2014
Questions (30)
Written answers
As the Deputy is no doubt aware we are almost at the halfway point in the OECD BEPS project. Following on from the seven reports released two weeks ago, another batch of deliverables are due for completion in September 2015, with the remaining BEPS reports expected to be finalised in December 2015. We have welcomed the first set of reports as they are the first milestones in this project. However it is important to recognise that the timetable provides reporting timelines and not implementation deadlines. The BEPS actions will be implemented through a mixture of updates to OECD guidelines/recommendations which countries would have to strongly consider implementing in their domestic law, and updates to bilateral tax treaties, which the OECD plans to amend on a multilateral basis by means of an OECD Multilateral Convention. Of the seven recent deliverables, there are: two final reports (Action 1 Digital Economy and Action 15 - Feasibility of a Multilateral Instrument), one interim report (Action 5 Harmful tax practices) and four reports containing draft recommendations (Actions 2 Hybrid mismatches, 6 Treaty abuse, 8 Transfer pricing intangibles and 13 Transfer pricing documentation). The OECD has acknowledged that the recommendations remain draft in order to fully assess the interaction between all the different BEPS workstreams. Therefore the BEPS project is best seen as an overall package which is still in progress. While there is still significant work to be done in finalising the recommendations, the reports are a big step towards addressing problems in the international tax environment.