The Resources section of the website is being replaced by a user-editable wiki.
The pages that were previously linked in the Resources menu can be found here:
This page contains links to the source documents. For analysis of the documents see the sub-pages accessible from the top menu.
The Current Australia/US Double Tax Agreement:
- Treaty text (html)(pdf)(technical explanation)
- Explanatory Memorandum (Income Tax (International Agreements) Amendment Bill 1983)
- Key points from the ATO website
- 2001 Protocol (html)(pdf)(technical explanation)
- Explanatory Memorandum (International Tax Agreements Amendment Bill (No.1) 2002)
Model Tax Treaties:
- 2016 US Model Treaty
- 2014 OECD Model Tax Convention on Income and Capital
The Australian FATCA Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA):
Relevant academic papers on tax treaties, international taxation and/or FATCA:
- Christians, Allison, Human Rights at the Borders of Tax Sovereignty presented at NYU 13 Feb 2017 (commentary) – see comment below.
- Christians, Allison, When Parliament Sleeps: Tax Treaty Practice in Canada (May 17, 2016). 10 J. Parl. & Political L. 15 (2016). Available at SSRN / Additional data at Isaac Brock – while this paper is not analysis of the treaty itself, it discusses problems with the process of amending or re-negotiating a tax treaty based on Canadian experience.
- Shaviro, Daniel, Taxing Potential Community Members’ Foreign Source Income (July 1, 2015). NYU Law and Economics Research Paper No. 15-09. Available at SSRN
Other useful websites are listed here.
If you would like to add additional resources, leave a link in the comments.
I have added a list of academic papers to the bottom of this page. If you know of any others that should be included, please leave a comment.
The paper by Allison Christians on Human Rights at the Borders of Tax Sovereignty is quite interesting (there’s a link to the paper above). The first part of the paper explores the philosophical justifications of a government’s right to tax. These justifications are then examined with respect to citizenship taxation and the taxation of multinational corporations.
I found the comparison with California’s Worldwide Unitary Tax quite interesting. Non-resident US taxpayers not getting anywhere because they have no political power – not in the US where they’re spread across every congressional district – and not in their home countries where they are a small minority and similarly dispersed. Business interests have much more power – which is why so many countries passed the FATCA IGAs as quickly as they could. The conclusion seems to be that non-resident US taxpayers are more likely to find relief in the courts than from the legislature (either in the US or where they live).
A blog post about this article by Dan Shaviro at NYU makes the interesting observation:
If this isn’t already part of your resources, it might prove to contain ammunition to support analysis and arguments re privacy issues and constitutionality of the Australia US IGA;
‘Intergovernmental agreement to implement FATCA — submission to the Treasury’
September 2012
Timothy Pilgrim, Privacy Commissioner
https://www.oaic.gov.au/engage-with-us/submissions/intergovernmental-agreement-to-implement-fatca
Came across it again, and thought I’d send it along just in case.
Thanks so much, badger.
We’re trying to maintain an organised list of resources on our wiki – if anyone has documents that are missing, or wants to give feedback, feel free to leave comments here, email us via our About page, or become a wiki editor.
Thanks, Karen for the brief discussion on this topic, We are a taxation company working in Australia. Your article definitely helped us to solve some of our issues. We would like to hear more from you. Thank you.