Suchergebnisse

The oil and gas industry is an important industry for several Eu- ropean countries. Due to the uniqueness of the industry, there have been special corporate taxation rules for the oil and gas industry where jurisdic- tion adopts formulary apportionment rules for levying cross-border corpo- rate taxation. Alaska of the United States of America is a typical jurisdic- tion where a special formula for the oil and gas industry is provided and the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base Directive Proposal under the European Union law has also a special formula for the oil and gas in- dustry, due to the influence from the United States of America formulary apportionment experiences. Based on the comparison between the Com- mon Consolidated Corporate Tax Base and Alaska experiences, this paper shows that the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base's oil and gas in- dustry formula has two theoretical flaws. The paper suggests that the fun- damental rationale for the oil and gas industry should reaffirm the im- portance of the resource origin and a special asset factor is necessary for the oil and gas industry for improving the current Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base Directive Proposal. The current Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base Directive Proposal has made an effort to take into ac- count the interests of the natural resource origin countries, but it used a wrong policy tool. The original aim of the oil and gas industry formula is not achieved and new tax planning loopholes are created. The Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base's oil and gas industry formula is also a typical example that illustrates the risk of the "lost in translation" in comparative law research and legal transplantation.

The tax neutrality principle was defined as a tax system not influencing the taxpayers' business decisions. Economists usually use 'the no tax world' as the baseline to decide if a specific tax measure is 'neutral. If a taxpayer's reaction to a specific tax is the same as if there is no such tax, then it is neutral. Such formulation of tax neutrality is inappropriate to evaluate taxation in a regional market as European Union. This paper estab- lishes a new normative framework for evaluating the EU corporate tax law reform project, the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB) Proposal, that aims to properly tax MNE taxpayers' cross-border income by a pre-decided formula. The tax neutrality principle should be not be based on the no-tax baseline but interpreted as 'faithfully reflecting the taxpayers' economic activities throughout EU'. EU Member States should maintain proper fiscal autonomy to decide their actual administration inputs (the public benefit provided) and their own method to implement the EU level corporate group taxation (the subsidiarity principle). This trio-formulated neutrality concept falls between Rawls' liberalism theory and Nozick's libertarianism theory, closer to Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel's tax jus- tice theory. Such trio-combination also better regulates the interactions of the three actors in the EU internal market: EU, Member States and MNE taxpayers. This reformed neutrality is a more appropriate norm than one single economic or legal principle for the EU corporate tax reform

Formulary apportionment is a method to allocate taxing rights of states. It is different from the OECD's international taxation rules which are based on bilateral tax treaties and national transfer pricing rules. Formulary apportionment adopts a pre-decided formula to allocate the taxing rights on cross-border taxable activities. In a pre-decided formula, it is common to have various factors, such as sales, labour, asset of the taxpayers. Since early 20 th century, USA has a long history of formulary apportionment in the field of state taxation. Many states of USA adopt their own formulas to allocate their taxing rights upon some cross-state business activities. Based on the experiences and practice in USA, European Union has also an ambitious project: Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB) Directive Proposal. This Directive aims to harmonize corporate tax base for all EU Member States and provide a uniform sharing formula, to allocate taxing rights of corporate tax to replace the traditional bilateral tax treaties and over complicated transfer pricing rules. This paper analyses the possibility of inflating the sales factor, both in USA and in the CCCTB Directive Proposal due to including items such as marketable securities and hedging transactions. The sales factor is the ratio between the sales of a specific group member company (the numerator) to the whole corporate group' sales (the denominator). One obvious possibility is to inflate the ratio by including items in the denominator, such as marketable securities, hedging transactions. In USA, these items are no longer defined as sales in the formula, and thus are excluded from the formula. However, the CCCTB Directive has not fully eliminated this problem of inflating the sales factor, and thus leaves a loophole.

General Anti-Avoidance Rule (GAAR) is a type of rule designed to combat the tax-avoidance scenarios that in a legal form lawfully but aims to circumvent the legal consequences. GAAR is necessary for a tax system to address unexpected innovative tax avoidance scenarios. In the field of tax law, GAAR has been criticized for being too abstract and thus harmful to legal certainty. In the context of EU integration, the concept of GAAR has been developed and elaborated by Court of Justice of European Union as well as secondary laws, but there are quite a few different formulations. In the existing literature, it is established that, there are the subject test and the objective test cumulatively in the GAAR, which examines the taxpayers' subjective intension and the objective economic reality. As to the relation between these two tests, scholars have established the theory that, the formulation and the context of the subjective test is actually influenced by the tax rule involved (that is, the purpose of the norm being circumvented). This paper will revisit GAARs in the EU tax law and present that, the theory of GAAR based on the purpose of the violated tax norm is indeed supported by latest case law of CJEU as well new Directives. Furthermore, the intention of the norm reconciles the subject test and the objective test. In this regard, the unpredictability of 'GAAR' actually has become more predictable.

Abstract. Landslide spatial, temporal, and size probabilities were used to perform a landslide hazard assessment in this study. Eleven intrinsic geomorphological, and two extrinsic rainfall factors were evaluated as landslide susceptibility related factors as they related to the success rate curves, landslide ratio plots, frequency distributions of landslide and non-landslide groups, as well as probability–probability plots. Data on landslides caused by Typhoon Aere in the Shihmen watershed were selected to train the susceptibility model. The landslide area probability, based on the power law relationship between the landslide area and a noncumulative number, was analyzed using the Pearson type 5 probability density function. The exceedance probabilities of rainfall with various recurrence intervals, including 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 and 200 yr, were used to determine the temporal probabilities of the events. The study was conducted in the Shihmen watershed, which has an area of 760 km2 and is one of the main water sources for northern Taiwan. The validation result of Typhoon Krosa demonstrated that this landslide hazard model could be used to predict the landslide probabilities. The results suggested that integration of spatial, area, and exceedance probabilities to estimate the annual probability of each slope unit is feasible. The advantage of this annual landslide probability model lies in its ability to estimate the annual landslide risk, instead of a scenario-based risk.

Abstract. A risk reduction program was developed after debris-flow disaster analysis is conducted using mitigation structures, evacuation measures and community restrained expansion strategy. The risk assessment method delineates hazard zones and analyzes vulnerability and the resilient capacity of an affected area, allowing the prediction of losses of properties and lives, and the corresponding risk. It can also be used to evaluate performance of a risk reduction program. The proposed method was applied to the Songhe community as a case study to assess debris-flow risk and performance of reduction programs consisting of mitigation structures, evacuation measures and a restrained expansion strategy. Total annual risk decreased to $0.01 million from $0.72 million for the No. 1 Torrent and to $0.36 million from $1.22 million for the No. 2 Torrent after mitigation structures were installed, and evacuation measures were implemented based on restrained expansion. Although mitigation structures are costly, they can reduce the size of hazard zones. Delimitating the Designated Soil and Water Conservation Area restrains community expansion and decreases possible losses. Although evacuation measures cannot reduce the size of hazard zones, they effectively increase the resilient capacity of residents. The benefit-cost ratio for mitigation structures exceeds 1.0 for both torrents with an average of 3.87; the benefit-cost ratio for evacuation measures is markedly greater than 1.0. Combining mitigation structures and evacuation measures increases the total benefit with a benefit-cost ratio of 4.38. Analytical results showed that the risk reduction program is cost-effective.