The OECD’s Task Force on Tax and Development met on 1 March 2016 to discuss the inclusive framework for implementing the OECD’s recommendations on base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) on a global basis, including the initiatives to support developing countries with domestic resource mobilization. The OECD’s Task Force can assist developing countries in the standard setting process and BEPS implementation thereby ensuring fairer and more efficient revenue-raising.

Participants in the meeting included representatives of governments, international and regional organizations and business. The meeting recognized that developing countries face particular challenges in implementing the BEPS recommendations and these are to be addressed under the inclusive framework. The needs of developing countries include intensive technical support and capacity building on tax matters. The foundation for BEPS implementation is tax administration and tax policy together with strengthened capacity to deal with international tax avoidance and evasion.

The meeting noted the effort to develop practical tools for translating BEPS recommendations into suitable approaches for developing countries. Progress has been made on putting together the toolkit to help developing countries deal with the difficulties of access to comparable data and on approaches to applying international standards in the absence of comparables. Work has also continued on developing a toolkit to help developing countries with transfer pricing documentation requirements. The documentation toolkit also aims to give clear guidance on the use of the country by country report for risk assessment purposes.

Next steps

The proposed next steps for the OECD’s Task Force are to encourage developing countries to join the inclusive framework for BEPS implementation and support the development of seven further toolkits by 2018 to translate the BEPS deliverables into guidance for developing countries.

The Task Force fully endorses the transfer pricing capacity building support to deal with BEPS challenges provided by the OECD with the African Tax Administration Forum (ATAF), European Commission and World Bank group. The Task Force also supports the plan by Tax Inspectors without Borders (TIWB) to increase the number of programs to twenty by the end of 2017 and to thirty by the end of 2018.