On 26 September 2017 the OECD released six peer review reports evaluating efforts to improve dispute resolution mechanisms. The reports relate to implementation of measures by Belgium, Canada, Netherlands, Switzerland, the UK and the US. A document for each of these jurisdictions addresses the implementation of best practices. More than 110 recommendations have been made in these reports relating to the minimum standard. In the next stage of the peer review process the efforts made by each jurisdiction to address any issues identified in the stage 1 peer review reports will be monitored.
The reports identified the following main areas where improvements are necessary:
- Resolution of mutual agreement procedure (MAP) cases within an average of 24 months is a problem for some jurisdictions especially in transfer pricing cases;
- Although MAP guidance is generally clear and accessible some of the jurisdictions needed to make improvements and these are already being made; and
- Recommendations were made for each jurisdiction to align its tax treaty MAP provisions with the standard in Action 14 of the OECD report on base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS). In the case of some of those treaties this will already have been done through the multilateral instrument (MLI) incorporating tax treaty related BEPS measures into existing bilateral tax treaties.
