United Nations Practical Portfolios on Protecting the Tax Base of Developing Countries

In order to complement and operationalize the guidelines contained in the United Nations Handbook on Selected Issues in Protecting the Tax Base of Developing Countries through more in-depth and hands-on practical guidance, as well as to make it accessible to a broader audience of relevant stakeholders in developing countries, the Financing for Development Office developed a series of United Nations Practical Portfolios on Protecting the Tax Base of Developing Countries (Practical Portfolios). These practical materials are intended to assist tax officials in developing countries to recognize the main causes of tax base erosion in their countries and to identify relevant issues in the context of their domestic tax law and network of tax treaties, with a view to assessing the various options available to them to effectively address these issues. The first set of Practical Portfolios deal with base-eroding payments for services, interest, rent and royalties. Based on the demand expressed by developing countries on several occasions, additional practical portfolios will be developed addressing further issues of particular interest and relevance to developing countries, including general anti-abuse rules. The draft Practical Portfolios were shared and discussed with a number of government officials from 57 developing countries, members of the United Nations Committee of Experts on International Cooperation in Tax Matters (UN Tax Committee), as well as representatives of international and regional tax organizations, at three workshops, held in Panama City in June 2015, in Berlin in December 2015, in Nairobi in March 2017 and in Addis Ababa in November 2017. The feedback received during this broad consultation was incorporated in the Practical Portfolios, and the Financing for Development Office plans to continue this consultation process with representatives from developing countries, both on the existing and on additional Practical Portfolios, that will be developed to address other relevant issues in protecting the tax base of developing countries, with a view to more comprehensively capturing and reflecting the point of view of these countries in the final versions of these materials.