The Role of Income Tax Treaties in International Taxation

Tax treaties are bilateral agreements between countries. The purpose of bilateral tax treaties is typically expressed to be “the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of fiscal evasion.” As most countries contain within their domestic law provisions to prevent double taxation of their residents where another country taxes the same income on a source basis, the main operation of tax treaties in this respect is for other types of double taxation that can arise as elaborated below. The prevention of fiscal evasion primarily refers to cases where taxpayers fraudulently conceal income in an international setting and rely on the inability of tax administrations to obtain information from abroad. The exchange of information article in tax treaties are the major provision dealing with this problem. Because of the capital flight experienced by many developing and transition countries, exchange of information is important, but in practice there are some considerable hurdles to successful exchange.
From the perspective of developing and transition countries, there are a number of other purposes of tax treaties that are usually unstated but in many cases are more important.
First, there is the division of tax revenues to be derived from income involving the two countries that are parties to the treaty. Where flows of income from business and investment are balanced between two countries, or even among a group of countries, it often does not make a large difference if each country agrees to significantly curtail its source jurisdiction to tax, as its residence taxation of income sourced in the other country is correspondingly increased. Where the flows are substantially unbalanced, the conclusion of a treaty under which each country gives up some of its source jurisdiction to tax generally