Base Erosion and Profit Shifting

Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) refers to tax avoidance strategies that exploit gaps and mismatches in tax rules to artificially shift profits between jurisdictions in order to minimise tax liability.

At the request of G20 leaders in June 2012, an OECD/G20 project was launched in order to identify the key issues that lead to BEPS and in 2015 the BEPS Package, made up of a 15-point Action Plan was delivered.

In November 2015 the BEPS package was endorsed by G20 leaders who called on the OECD 'to develop an inclusive framework' in order 'to monitor the implementation of the BEPS project globally.'

In June 2016 the Isle of Man committed to the OECDs BEPS standards and joined the Inclusive Framework which, as of February 2019, comprised of 128 global jurisdictions.

Key priorities

In order to tackle BEPS effectively it was recognised that there were key priorities.

As a result four minimum standards were identified to:

• fight harmful tax practices (BEPS Action 5)
• prevent tax treaty abuse (Action 6)
• improve transparency with Country-by-Country Reporting (Action 13)
• enhance the effectiveness of dispute resolution (Action 14)

As a member of the Inclusive Framework the Isle of Man is committed to implementing the four minimum standards and further details of how this will be achieved can be found at the links below.

BEPS Action 15 provides an analysis of the tax and legal issues related to the development of a multilateral instrument that enables participating countries to quickly and efficiently modify their network of double tax agreements to address the treaty-specific BEPS concerns including those outlined in the OECD's Action 6 and 14 reports. In addition to the four minimum standards the Isle of Man is also implementing Action 15.

Further information on BEPS and copies of each of the OECDs reports into each action can be found on OECD's BEPS Action page.