THE Government proposes to disclose the number of disputes being
negotiated under the Mutual Agreement Procedures (MAPs) of tax treaties along
with the time being taken to resolve such disputes. Action 14 of the Base
Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project of the G-20/OECD countries, which
seeks to make dispute resolution mechanisms more effective, mandates that all
participating countries shall provide details pertaining to tax disputes being
negotiated under the Mutual Agreement Procedure (MAP) Article of tax treaties.
The details are to
be provided in agreed upon templates to capture information about inventory of
cases and outcomes of cases. Such details would include the number of cases
pending under MAP, number of cases resolved fully to eliminate double taxation,
number of cases that could not be resolved, etc.
Disclosure of such
information is expected to bring about more transparency in the working of
competent authorities of all participating countries and would perhaps result in
quicker resolution of double taxation problems faced by taxpayers across the
globe.
This was stated by
Santosh Kumar Gangwar, Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance in written
reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.
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