ICTD Senior Fellow Sol Picciotto, Research Fellow Martin Hearson, and researcher Mustapha Ndajiwo participated in the recent UN Tax Committee (UNTC) meeting in Geneva. Sol contributed comments in the discussions on the revision of the UN Manual on Transfer Pricing, while Mustapha contributed to the discussion on digitalisation, pointing in particular to the relevance of the provision in the UN model tax treaty for a taxable presence based on delivery of services. The UNTC Secretary Michael Lennard also circulated the report produced by the ICTD and the BEPS Monitoring Group to all the UNTC members following our workshop in London in July.
In partnership with the South Centre the ICTD organised a roundtable side-event for developing country participants. It was attended by 5 UNTC members and 3 government delegates, including Eric Mensah (co-chair of the UNTC), George Obell, Grace Kariuki, and Josephine Muchiri (Kenya Revenue Authority), Abdul Chowdhary and Daniel Uribe (South Centre), Attiya Waris and Bosire Nyamori (University of Nairobi), Rajat Bansal (India), Margaret Chikuba (Zambia), and Jose Troya (Ecuador).
The main topic of the roundtable was possible unilateral measures developing countries could take to respond to the problems caused by digitalisation. Participants also discussed key substantive issues that were covered in the week’s meeting, including extractive industry taxation, tax treatment of investment funds, and methods to provide technical support for UNTC participants. To learn more, see the full event report here.
