The 104th tax seminar on advanced tax treaty issues has been held in Seoul from November 13th to 18th by the Tax Programme of the OECD Korea Policy Centre.

For this seminar, three experts from the OECD and its member countries have come to the event to provide lectures and discuss recent issues with respect to tax treaty. Also, tax officials from emerging economies have joined the seminar to have studies on the update version of the Model Tax Convention especially focusing on the tax treaty section.

Mr. David Partington (OECD Secretariat, Course leader )

Mr. Michael Kieswetter (Federal Ministry of Finance, Germany)

Mr. Blair Hammond (Canada Revenue Agency, Canada)

Mr, Choonho Park, the General Director and Mr. Roungrit, the Participant from Thailand

The Seminar included the changes to the OECD in the 2017 update. Most of the 2017 update are the result of the treaty related work on base erosion and profits shifting (BEPS). Those changes are now being rapidly implemented in existing tax treaties through the multilateral instrument. For this reason, the seminar has been useful for officials involved with the application and interpretation of tax treaties, consideration of competent authority issues and the negotiation of tax treaties.

The seminar was orientated towards an open discussion of the issues. Participants actively engaged in the discussion and raised practical cases or examples for discussion.

These are the main subjected discusses during the seminar.

- The role of tax treaties

- The 2017 Update of the OECD Model Tax Convention

- Updating treaties through the Multilateral Instrument (MLI)

- Taxing business profits: permanent establishment definition (PE) 

- Interpretation of tax treaties and treaty obligations

- Permanent establishment definition continued

- Taxing business profits: Attribution of profits to PEs

- Taxing cross-border digital transactions

- Taxing income from personal services

- Treaty shopping and beneficial ownership

- Treatment of dividends and interest

- Treatment of royalties, rents, know-how and software

- Countering abuse of treaties and practical application of the principle purpose test