Theo Elshof, Arnas Laurynas and Emile Monfils of Quantera Global were at the heart of a TP-minded crowd at TP Minds conference in London. They spent two days discussing a wide range of current issues, such as initiatives of taxing the digital economy, challenges of compliance and governance, actions of and interactions with the tax authorities, as well as the upcoming draft of the OECD guidelines on financial transactions. A lot of important topics that will shape the international tax framework of the future.
APAs
The popularity of APAs is increasing on a global scale. Theo Elshof comments: “TP Minds’ second day had some optimistic views on the use of APAs. As former head of the APA team in the Netherlands I am a big supporter of this. Quantera Global is able to give local APA teams the support and capabilities to do their job. It would be good to improve countries working together on this effectively, within certain time frames.”
Taxation in the digital enonomy
Arnas adds: “Taxation of highly digitalised businesses is a very contentious topic with many stakeholders. During the conference we heard Spotify’s Jens Svolgaard present an industry view that value is still created by the talented and intrapreneurial people within the organisation and not by the consumer providing the data. We saw the optimism of the OECD representatives to reach an international consensus. However, with the unilateral measures being introduced or proposed in an increasing number of territories, the policy setting of taxation in the digital economy is getting out of the hands of the experts. We need to make ourselves heard on what the sensible solutions could be and be proactive in reassessing the value chains of the future.”
Transparency
Theo: “Transparency in TP is happening. It was good to see that the participants of the TP Minds conference agree that transparency is a good development. This will result in some form of public CbCR. The fact that the majority of companies seems not to have started to plan around this tells me there is still some work to be done!”
