Multinational Efforts to Limit Intellectual Property Income Shifting : The OECD's Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) Project

Before 2017, there were two major international movements going on at the same time: (1) the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement; and (2) the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD’s) Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) Project. The movements presented a unique opportunity to consider the intersection of a behemoth multinational trade agreement and ambitious multinational efforts to close international tax loopholes.Although the TPP is essentially dead, as newly elected U.S. President Donald Trump unsigned the TPP as a matter of unilateral Executive power, the OECD’s BEPS Project is not. Indeed, many nations have been adopting BEPS Project proposals to prevent international tax avoidance by multinational companies. With that said, however, the United States’ commitment to adopting BEPS Project proposals is far from certain. For the United States, at least, the end of the era of multinational trade agreements could signal the end of the era of multilateral efforts to close international tax loopholes. This article looks at the OECD’s BEPS Project, and its implications for multinational companies and many countries