8 Aug 2005

La Inversión Internacional de las PYMEs

En la actualidad, la normativa fiscal de muchos países europeos ofrecen ventajas tanto para la empresa exportadora como para aquella que decide invertir en otro país. Sin embargo, a la hora de tomar alguna de esas decisiones habrá que tener en cuenta la fiscalidad extranjera, es decir, la correspondiente a los países donde se ha propuesto operar la sociedad española, porque, en muchos de esos casos, la tributación será menor de la que se produciría si la actividad se realizara, por ejemplo, en el mercado español.

En general, la inversión puede llevarse a cabo estableciendo una filial o una sucursal en el país extranjero, hecho que afectará al cálculo de la Base Imponible.

Inversión a través una filial (ésta posee personalidad jurídica). Así, en caso que la inversión deba financiarse con préstamos de la matriz o se requiera la utilización y cesión de activos intangibles (como por ejemplo, una patente, un proceso industrial o know-how), la utilización de una filial resultaría más adecuado, dado que los gastos generados (derivados de intereses o cánones) podrán ser fiscalmente deducibles en el otro país si no se sobrepasan determinados límites. Por el contrario, resulta habitual que exista una retención (por ejemplo, de un 10%) en el país extranjero por este tipo de operaciones.

Inversión a través de una sucursal (ésta no posee personalidad jurídica propia). La sucursal no tiene la posibilidad de deducir todo ese tipo de gastos. Pero, en caso de producirse beneficios en la operación exterior, es más probable que su distribución quede sometida a una menor retención en el caso de la sucursal que en el caso de la filial.

La existencia de convenios para evitar la doble imposición permitirá reducir o evitar esas retenciones. Si no existiera un convenio favorable con el otro país, se vería estimulado el uso de sociedades interpuestas (por ejemplo, una sociedad Húngara para el pago de los cánones), hecho que fuerza a los países a firmar convenios adecuados, además de estar bien visto en el seno de las Organizaciones Internacionales con el objeto de favorecer la inversión internacional.

Una de las bases que se enseñan en las clases de fiscalidad internacional descansa en el uso de convenios de doble imposición para que la canalización de los rendimientos que puedan proceder de las filiales operativas del grupo, reduciendo al máximo la retención en el país de origen de dichas rentas, mediante la interposición de entidades que disfruten de un convenio con ambos países.

Se debe tener en cuenta las posibilidades que ofrece la normativa fiscal del país de destino de la inversión en cuanto a deducciones y bonificaciones que dicho país permita (cada vez más discutidos por la Unión Europea). En caso de prestación de servicios, o que se deba financiar la inversión vía préstamo (tener en cuenta el índice de subcapitalización de aquellos países que lo exigen, como España y Francia), el coste puede llegar a reducir la base imponible de la filial (remuneración del servicio o el pago del interés), pero el sistema de retenciones pueden hacer esto poco interesante.

Todo esto no es un hecho que tan solo afecte a grandes corporaciones: se calcula que alrededor del 60% de las exportaciones españolas las llevan a cabo las empresas de carácter familiar. En algunos países este porcentaje es mayor. Por ejemplo, el 80% de las empresas españolas que tienen relaciones comerciales con Corea son PYMES.

Salvador Trinxet
Profesor de Fiscalidad Internacional, IESE

29 Jun 2005

E-Commerce and International Tax Planning


Carla Carnaghan ( University of Lethbridge) and Kenneth J. Klassen (University of Georgia) posted the paper "E-Commerce and International Tax Planning"

Here is the Abstract:

This paper investigates whether the increased flexibility afforded by e-commerce has allowed firms to increase their tax planning activities. We specifically address whether multinational firms that make greater use of e-commerce have greater sensitivity to tax incentives relative to firms making less use of e-commerce. Using proxies for e-commerce activity, we find that the relation between exports and tax incentives is increasing in the e-commerce measures.

Alternative tests of foreign tax expense and country-level trade activity corroborate the main test. This research is an important first step in understanding the larger impact of e-commerce on international tax planning behavior.

Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=557124 or DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.557124

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7 Jun 2005

Corporate Expatriations: The Tension Between Symbols and Substance in the Taxation of Multinational Corporations

The Congressional Response to Corporate Expatriations: The Tension Between Symbols and Substance in the Taxation of Multinational Corporations


Michael S. Kirsch (Notre Dame Law School) published this report at Virginia Tax Review, Vol. 24, 2005



Here is the Abstract:

During the past few years, several high-profile U.S.-based multinational corporations have changed their tax residence from the United States to Bermuda or some other tax haven. They have accomplished these expatriations, and the resulting millions of dollars of annual tax savings, merely by changing the place of incorporation of their corporate parent, without the need to make any substantive changes to their business operations or their U.S.-based management structure.

Congress and the media have focused significant attention on this phenomenon. Despite this attention, Congress initially enacted only a non-tax provision targeting corporate expatriations - a purported ban on expatriated companies entering into contracts with the Department of Homeland Security.

This Article addresses this alternative sanction, concluding that it is prototypical symbolic legislation, with no instrumental effect.

The Article also discusses the extent to which the initial Congressional debate over expatriations may have had indirect instrumental effects by furthering the informal enforcement of social norms. Ultimately, after almost three years of debate, Congress enacted a tax provision intended to deny the desired tax benefits to expatriating corporations. The Article also addresses the substantive tax policy implications of this response, concluding that it illustrates the tenuous normative underpinnings of the place-of-incorporation rule for determining corporate residence and the need for Congress to reconsider what makes a corporation American in an increasingly globalized world.

Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=647761



This Blog/Web Site ("Blog") does not to provide specific legal advice, it is for educational purposes only. This Blog is made available by the international adviser, lawyer or law firm for educational purposes only as well as to give you general information and a general understanding of the law, not to provide specific legal advice.

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6 May 2005

David R. Francis has published an article entitled "Secretly, tiny nations hold much wealth" in CS Monitor:

"Although they have only 1 percent of the world's inhabitants, they hold a quarter of United States stocks and nearly a third of all the globe's assets.
They're tax havens: 70 mostly tiny nations that offer no-tax or low-tax status to the wealthy so they can stash their money. Usually, the process is so secret that it draws little attention. But the sums - and lost tax revenues - are growing so large that the havens are getting new and unaccustomed scrutiny.

For example: When London's Tax Justice Network (TJN) reported a month ago that rich individuals worldwide had stashed $11.5 trillion of their assets in tax havens, it caused a fuss in Europe. "Super-rich hide trillions offshore," blazed a British newspaper headline.


Although that report received little notice outside Europe, there are rumblings of concern in the United States. That's not surprising. Nations lose an estimated $255 billion in tax revenues a year because of the havens, according to TJN. The US alone probably loses $60 billion a year, a tax expert estimates.

The loss hits not only prosperous industrial countries, but also developing nations. As a result, dozens of church groups and other nongovernmental organizations concerned with world poverty are joining tax reformers in what will probably become a major political battle. They aim to stem the outflow of money from poor nations into tax havens - an outpouring that may exceed today's global foreign aid of some $60 billion a year.

"If we are serious about reducing poverty, one of the first things we need to tackle is an international financial system run by the rich, for the rich, at the expense of the poor," states David Woodward, director of the New Economics Foundation, a London think tank.

Corrupt officials in poor nations, illegally, and multinational corporations, mostly legally, siphon huge amounts of money into bank accounts and shell companies in 70 tax havens, such as the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and Jersey.

"It's going to be the next major issue," forecasts Lucy Komisar, a New York journalist writing a book on offshore banking. She compares the drive against tax havens with the civil rights movement of the 1960s, in which she participated, and the feminist and environmental movements of more recent decades.

Ms. Komisar helped organize a meeting on Capitol Hill April 7 to get an American branch of the TJN going. Representatives of several members of Congress, the AFL-CIO and a few other unions, several prominent tax research groups, and the United Church of Christ attended. About a dozen well-known activist groups were also present, including Public Citizen, Greenpeace, and the National Council of La Raza.

By cracking down on capital flight and corruption in developing countries, "we wouldn't have so much poverty in the world," says Robert McIntyre, executive director of Citizens for Tax Justice. He offered at that meeting to find funding for the TJN group in the US and recruit a paid director.

Not everyone sees it this way. The Center for Freedom and Prosperity in Washington, for example, sees tax havens as "an escape hatch for overburdened taxpayers." It relishes "tax competition" between nations. The center also argues that bank secrecy in countries like Switzerland can protect the money of those who face persecution by repressive regimes.

The tax-haven numbers in the TJN report were calculated by a British research firm from conservative sources - such as Merrill Lynch's "World Wealth Report" and the Boston Consulting Group's "Global Wealth Report." The trillions of dollars reported don't include money parked in tax havens by companies - probably also a massive sum.

There are about 3 million shell companies (set up largely to duck taxes) in offshore tax havens, Komisar reckons. These tiny tax havens hold 31 percent of total world assets and 26 percent of the stock of US multinationals.

"As our economies have globalized, our tax systems remain nationally based and measures that should have been put in place decades ago to improve international tax cooperation have not been put in place," says John Christensen, international coordinator in London of TJN. "So the tax burden has been shifted from those who can afford it to middle- and low-income households, and from businesses to working people and consumers."

In the late 1990s, industrial-nation negotiators reached an agreement to pressure tax-haven countries to stop facilitating money laundering, drug dealing, and tax evasion. The deal was championed by the Clinton administration. But it was squashed by the new Bush administration, keen for tax cuts.

Then came 9/11 and a recognition that terrorists and drug dealers use the same international finance channels as tax dodgers. So the Bush administration "has become less strident in its support for bank secrecy and other nondisclosure policies," notes Mr. McIntyre.

Now, a pioneer opponent of tax evasion through tax havens, Sen. Carl Levin (D) of Michigan, has joined with Sen. Norm Coleman (R) of Minnesota to sponsor the Tax Shelter and Tax Haven Reform Act. It would enable the Treasury secretary to designate a tax haven as "uncooperative" with Internal Revenue Service investigations. Though not a panacea, the bill, soon to be reintroduced in the current Congress, would give tax investigators a weapon: Income from such designated tax havens would lose some tax advantages.

This Blog/Web Site ("Blog") does not to provide specific legal advice, it is for educational purposes only. This Blog is made available by the international adviser, lawyer or law firm for educational purposes only as well as to give you general information and a general understanding of the law, not to provide specific legal advice.

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3 Mar 2005

Intellectual Property Holding companies

February 28, 2005

Excerpt from Practical US/Domestic Tax Strategies by Paul Dau, Paul Devinsky and Justin Hill (McDermott Will & Emery LLP)

Typical reasons for establishing intellectual property (IP) holding companies include (i) tax planning, (ii) protection in the event of insolvency, and (iii) administrative synergies, such as consolidation of legal costs. In reality the process of establishing and operating an IP holding company is far from trivial. By its very nature it brings together three complex legal fields, namely intellectual property, tax and insolvency.

Moreover, the considerations that apply are usually multi-jurisdictional and therefore inherently complex. Oftentimes, IP holding strategies turn out to be optimized with one or more of the above legal fields more in mind than the others. Failure to assess properly competing economic and legal considerations in these complex international scenarios can lead to failure to meet objectives and runaway costs.

In many cases, the holding company is a subsidiary within an international corporate group. Sometimes, although less often, the holding company is the parent company of the overall corporate group. Adoption of a suitable structure depends to a large extent on the headquarter jurisdiction, the mechanism by which the various synergies are anticipated to operate, and on the circumstances of the particular scenario.

From http://practicaltaxstrategies.blogspot.com/

This Blog/Web Site ("Blog") does not to provide specific legal advice, it is for educational purposes only. This Blog is made available by the international adviser, lawyer or law firm for educational purposes only as well as to give you general information and a general understanding of the law, not to provide specific legal advice.

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