This article honours the scholarly legacy of Professor Michelle Markham by revisiting two of her final contributions to international tax law: her 2022 analysis of the OECD Bilateral Advance Pricing Arrangement Manual (BAPAM) and her 2024 examination of multilateral dispute resolution processes. In this retrospective tribute, we assess whether the data from 2023–2025 supports Michelle’s insights and predictions. The evidence confirms her prescience. BAPA completion times have decreased across major jurisdictions, consistent with the 30-month benchmark she evaluated and the aspirational reduction to 24 months that she endorsed. Soft law has proven effective through peer pressure, benchmarking, and the gradual incorporation of OECD guidance into domestic legal frameworks, validating her scholarly engagement with non-binding instruments. Multilateral arrangements are increasing, as she anticipated, reflecting a shift from bilateral to multilateral solutions, as she documented in her two articles. This article honours Michelle’s intellectual legacy by extending her analysis to assess subsequent developments and contributes to ongoing debates about the effectiveness of soft-law instruments in international tax governance.

Australia’s unique combination of economic and political attributes has clearly had an impact on its tax treaty policy. The country has been an OECD member for over half a century and has consistently supported OECD-promoted policies. It is, at the same time, relatively sparsely populated when viewed in terms of its physical size and abundance of natural resources, leaving it reliant on foreign capital for a significant portion of its resource exploitation enterprises. It is simultaneously both a capital exporter in terms of passive portfolio investment and a very serious capital importer in terms of direct non-portfolio active investment. The country’s tax treaty policy reflects the dichotomous policy interests, with early adoption of the United Nations (UN) Model policies on taxing rights over gains from the disposal of indirect interests in immovable property. At the same time, it veers towards OECD norms in terms of passive investment income. Particularly striking is its treatment of direct non-portfolio active investment where it has used a combination of more generous features from the OECD and UN Model treaties on top of generous domestic law exemptions to create a very favourable regime for remittances of profits from active subsidiaries in Australia.

On 22 November 2023, the groundwork was laid for a new United Nations (UN) Tax Convention, paving the way for a shift in leadership in international tax policy away from the OECD and towards a democratised approach that would give developing nations a greater voice in addressing aggressive tax practices and profit shifting. The move will also likely lead to a greater emphasis on sustainable development goals, which have the largest impact on the Global South, where strategies are needed to improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth. Concurrently, it is well documented that a significant form of revenue for developing nations is taxation. However, the collection is generally lower than in developed nations. Further, increasing revenue from the corporate income tax base is the most realistic approach to aid economic development through the tax system. Aggressive tax practices are one cause of low corporate tax revenue collection. This article considers the most common practices multinational entities (MNE) use to shift profits to low-or no-tax jurisdictions. Noting that transfer pricing is a fundamental source of profit shifting, the article discusses the benefits of an alternative model known as global formulary apportionment. In doing so, the advantages of its adoption for developing nations are discussed. The article then undertakes an empirical analysis using publicly available data contained in country-by-country reports to determine the effects of a formulary apportionment model on developing nations. The study specifically investigates the potential increases or decreases in revenue collected using different apportionment formulas. Data contained in publicly available country-by-country reports are relied upon to estimate the likely revenue effects of these different formulas. The article also demonstrates the likely simplification of such a model and its ability to stem aggressive tax practices such as transfer pricing and thin capitalisation. The article concludes that the UN Tax Convention should propose a global formulary apportionment model for the allocation of profits between jurisdictions. However, it cautions against the use of a formula that fails to adequately take into account the contributions to profits of MNEs that occur through genuine economic activity in developing countries.

The academic writing of Professor John Taylor on double tax treaties, particularly his meticulous documenting of the history of Australia's tax treaty network, is well known to international tax scholars. In honour of his contribution to this field of literature, we humbly attempt to contribute to the historical analysis of Australia's tax treaty network by testing and documenting the influence of domestic tax reviews conducted since 1999 on tax treaties negotiated or renegotiated in Australia over the same period. In the last 25 years, three significant reviews have extended recommendations beyond domestic tax reform to propose policy changes to the international tax treaty network. The Review of Business Taxation in 1999, the Board of Taxation's Review of International Taxation Arrangements in 2002-2003, and the Australia's Future Tax System review in 2010 made recommendations specifically relating to the tax treaty network. Between 1999 and 2023, the 25-year period of this study, Australia signed 33 tax treaties and protocols, thereby providing an ideal setting for examining the influence of tax reviews on tax treaty policy. This article examines the recommendations from the three reviews and considers their influence on Australia's tax treaty network. It notes the exemplary work of John Taylor in the analysis of the history of Australia's tax treaty policy and practices and provides a recommended approach to a future review of Australia's tax treaty network, concluding that a comprehensive review is not only warranted but long overdue.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the challenges faced by empirical researchers investigating a shift from taxing multinational entities using the arm’s length system to a formulary apportionment system. Theoretically, a shift should increase global tax collections as profits currently attributed to low or no tax jurisdictions are allocated to jurisdictions with true input or output factors and shift the allocation between these countries. Before any jurisdiction seriously contemplated a shift from an arm’s length allocation system to a formulary apportionment regime, however, it would want to estimate the revenue impact of such a change. Design/methodology/approach The paper systematically analyzes empirical papers that attempt to estimate the effects of formulary apportionment on country and global income revenue collected to determine the challenges faced by researchers. Findings The paper determines that there are both data and geo-political constraints that relate to (1) the method used to calculate the global profits of a multinational enterprise, (2) whether jurisdictions wish to adopt a global or regional formulary apportionment, (3) the weightings to be given to the factors used in the formulary apportionment, (4) the challenges of measuring sales at destination and the viability of surrogate measurements, (5) whether natural resources should be included in the measurement of the capital input factor, and (6) whether a redistribution objective should be included in the profit allocation formula. Originality/value Estimating the changes is challenging both in terms collecting the data needed for the calculations and the choice of design options to be tested. The paper provides synthesized knowledge in relation to the difficulties in estimating the effects of moving to a formulary apportionment model for taxing multinational entities.

In this article, the authors examine a recent Australian transfer pricing case that created an important precedent clarifying the calculation of arm’s-length price in transactions between associated parties.

The purpose of this article is to provide further and deeper insights on the size, nature, and drivers of the corporate income tax (CIT) compliance burden. The study, conducted during 2020-2021 across 10 jurisdictions with diverse economic characteristics, is built upon the premise that this information can be gained from developing a suitable CIT compliance burden diagnostic tool. The article details the methodology, analysis, and recommendations of the CIT pilot study. This article, modelled on a prior similar VAT study, adopts both the structure of the earlier article and, more importantly, the methodology, analysis, and findings are undertaken analogously. The primary objective of the CIT diagnostic tool is to provide an indication of the likely scale of compliance burden of a jurisdiction's CIT burden expressed in terms of a compliance burden index, and the main drivers of that burden. The secondary objective is to identify those aspects of CIT policy and administration that contribute to such burden most frequently across a population of surveyed jurisdictions. Despite significant disparity within factors and indicators, the pilot study results from the 10 jurisdictions surveyed indicate little difference in terms of compliance burden index ranking with a medium or high compliance burden for all CIT taxpayers. The consolidated results indicate that all jurisdictions contain CIT compliance and administration measures that can be improved.

Purpose Tax policymakers are currently navigating a path through a delicate dialectic of macro- and micro-level policy responses to the economic dislocation of the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this paper is to examine initial tax measures that are aimed at helping taxpayers needing liquidity, solvency and income support. Design/methodology/approach This study undertakes a review of key tax policy responses of six jurisdictions across the globe that have similar tax regimes and virus mitigation strategies (albeit with different outcomes). Key initiatives implemented from February to April 2020 by Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa and the UK are examined. Findings This study indicates that tax concessions are a crude and mostly ineffective way of assisting individuals and enterprises in difficulty. In the longer term, if the crisis prompts desirable reforms such as extending the recognition of tax losses, the income tax system will emerge fairer and more efficient. Practical implications An investigation of the short-term reforms announced relating to asset write-offs, tax deferral, tax losses and goods and services tax/value-added tax rates in light of the liquidity, income support and stimulus objectives shows that in some cases the policies may have been misguided. The findings can be used by policymakers as the basis for designing better targeted alternative non-tax responses. Originality/value Jurisdictional responses to tax policy reforms during a modern period of significant economic dislocation have yet to be documented in the literature. Specifically, this paper highlights the limitations of tax policy initiatives as a response to financial hardship.