A review petition has been filed in the controversial most-favored-nation (MFN) judgment delivered by the Indian Supreme Court last month.

India’s top court, on October 19, handed down a controversial ruling concerning MFN clauses in India’s tax treaties with countries including France, the Netherlands and Switzerland. The tax authority had refused to accept the taxpayers’ request for invoking the MFN clauses in the tax treaties, under which a reduced withholding tax rate were to be applied.

The top court, however, found in favour of the tax authority. As per sources, a review petition has now been filed asking the court to review its decision.

Barbados will levy an increased corporate tax rate of nine percent for most corporations from January 2024.

Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley has announced a suite of changes to the country’s corporate tax regime to be implemented in 2024.
​
The 9 nine corporate tax rate will not apply to insurance and shipping entities, and to businesses with revenue at or below BBD2million, which are registered under the Small Business Development Act.

On November 22, 2023, the Swiss Federal Council adopted the dispatch on the approval and implementation of an additional agreement supplementing the country’s tax treaty with France.

The additional agreement includes provisions to bring the tax treaty into line with the results of the OECD’s efforts to prevent base erosion and profit shifting.
​
The additional agreement must be approved by both countries to come into force.

Bermuda has issued a third public consultation paper on the proposed corporate income tax that would be apply to MNEs with annual revenue of EUR750m or more.

The Finance Ministry conducted two previous consultations in August and October. As a result of stakeholders’ feedback, the current proposal would introduce a corporate income tax that would be a covered tax under the OECD’s GloBE rules. This approach aims to minimize Top-Up taxes levied on Bermuda MNEs in other jurisdictions where they operate.

The corporate income tax legislation is intended to come into force in its entirety in January 2025, providing MNEs time to make transition adjustments.

The Government has proposed a statutory tax rate of 15 percent and is developing a robust package of Qualified Refundable Tax Credits (QRTCs) to maintain Bermuda’s attractiveness.

Denmark has gazetted regulation terminating its tax treaty with Russia.

The regulation was published in the Official Gazette on November 15.
The termination will take effect from January 1, 2024.
​

The Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes (Global Forum) has published new peer review reports on transparency and exchange of information on request (EOIR) for six of its members.

The reports concern Latvia, Mauritania, Pakistan, Poland, Serbia, and Thailand. The Forum has also published supplementary reports that reflect progress made by two members (Botswana and Dominica) in implementing the EOIR standard.

​More than half of the Global Forum members have now been fully reviewed in the second round of EOIR peer reviews and the ratings assigned are generally very good, with 88% of the jurisdictions obtaining satisfactory overall ratings (“Compliant” or “Largely Compliant”), 10% assessed as "Partially Compliant" and 2% as "Non-Compliant".

Philippines has joined the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on BEPS, an international collaboration with over 140 member countries and jurisdictions.

Through its membership, Philippines has committed to addressing the tax challenges arising from the digitalization of the economy by participating in the Two-Pillar Solution to reform the international taxation rules and ensure that multinational enterprises pay a fair share of tax wherever they operate.
​
Collaborating on an equal footing with all other members of the Inclusive Framework, Philippines will participate in the implementation of the BEPS package of 15 measures to tackle tax avoidance, improve the coherence of international tax rules, and ensure a more transparent tax environment.

48 countries intend to implement the OECD’s global tax transparency framework for the reporting and exchange of information with respect to crypto-assets by 2027.

The Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) is a key component of the International Standards for Automatic Exchange of Information in Tax Matters developed by the OECD under a G20 mandate. It provides for the automatic exchange of tax-relevant information on crypto-assets and comes against the backdrop of a rapid adoption of the use of crypto-assets for a wide range of investment and financial uses.
​
Unlike traditional financial products, crypto-assets can be transferred and held without the intervention of traditional financial intermediaries, such as banks, and without any central administrator having full visibility on either the transactions carried out or on crypto-asset holdings.

As part of the ongoing work of the OECD/IGF partnership on BEPS in the mining program, the OECD is seeking public comments on an additional toolkit that is designed to support developing countries in addressing the transfer pricing challenges faced when pricing minerals.

The document provides a framework to identify the primary economic factors that can influence the pricing of minerals ("mineral pricing framework") using transfer pricing principles.

The toolkit applies this transfer pricing framework as documented in Determining the Price of Minerals: A Transfer Pricing Framework to a specific mineral (lithium).

The South African Revenue Service has published the 2023 issue of the "Taxation in South Africa" guide, providing an overview of the most significant tax legislation administered in South Africa by the Commissioner for the South African Revenue Service.

The updated guide deals, amongst others, with the following: transfer pricing and thin capitalization; withholding tax on royalties and interest; dividends tax; general anti-avoidance rules; dispute resolution; and automatic exchange of information.
​
The updated guide was published on November 1.