The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s framework for international taxes has been coming under pressure in recent months. Pillar Two of the OECD’s Global Anti-Base Erosion Model Rules aims to ensure large multinational enterprises pay a minimum level of taxes on the income they receive in each jurisdiction where they operate.
On June 26, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced, “OECD Pillar 2 taxes will not apply to U.S. companies.” A statement released a few days later by Canada on behalf of the G7 brought a few additional details, including a “commitment to collaborate” on a “side-by-side system” that would exclude U.S.-parented groups from either the Income Inclusion Rule or Undertaxed Profits Rule applying to their foreign or domestic profits.
The business community has called on the OECD to provide greater clarity and certainty as to what this is all going to mean in the near future.
The nature of the exercise
While acknowledging the herculean efforts that have gone into building a global tax system from the ground up, now, over 18 months after the first Pillar Two taxes took effect and almost four years since the “final” Model Rules were issued, many taxpayers are still grappling with significant practical challenges in understanding and complying with the complexities of the Pillar Two rules. This stems in large part from the nature of the Pillar Two guidance process, as well as a system that requires 60+ countries each to implement rules on an ongoing basis.
When people talk about “Pillar Two,” what they are often referring to is (1) a combination of Model Rules, Commentary, and Administrative Guidance from the OECD (collectively, “OECD Guidance”), and (2) the actual statutes and regulations in each jurisdiction that has enacted one or more Pillar Two taxes. This two-step process by which Pillar Two guidance becomes law is a significant driver of the challenges taxpayers face under the regime.
The OECD Guidance consists of Model Rules and Commentary, the latter of which has been updated on numerous occasions through “Agreed Administrative Guidance.” To the OECD Inclusive Framework’s credit, this Administrative Guidance has often provided answers to questions that have perplexed the tax community and provided favorable relief or simplification in many instances. Still, the guidance process itself presents a number of challenges: Unlike U.S. Treasury Regulations, for example, which go through notice and comment procedures before taking final effect, OECD Administrative Guidance often drops with little warning, and once published, has immediate effect in some jurisdictions without taxpayer opportunity to provide feedback.
Even where the guidance is intended to provide clarity, taxpayers are often left with more questions than answers. For example, the
The second challenge taxpayers face in preparing for Pillar Two lies in the significant lag between OECD guidance and implementation of the rules into law in many countries. The Model Rules are intended to be applied on a uniform basis (with some degree of flexibility for Qualified Domestic Minimum Top-up Taxes), but delays in adopting guidance by individual countries could undercut this goal, leaving taxpayers and advisors to independently track which countries have adopted which provisions of the OECD guidance. As one particularly apt example, some countries have yet to adopt the UTPR Safe Harbor from July 2023, by which U.S.-parented groups would not be subject to the UTPR on U.S. income for 2025.
As an additional practical example, many jurisdictions that have IIR and/or QDMTT notification requirements related to the 2024 tax year have yet to publish their forms, XML schemas and filing instructions. Given that most of these filings are expected to be due no earlier than June 30, 2026, this may not seem like a problem yet; however, tax software vendors and advisory firms that have developed Pillar Two filing technology could be under extreme pressure if the calendar turns to 2026 and there are still dozens of documents, each with jurisdiction-specific nuances, still to come.
What to expect when you’re expecting Pillar Two relief
Setting aside the political challenges in reaching an agreement, the proposal raises a number of technical challenges, such as its effective date, what (if any) compliance requirements remain for U.S. groups, and whether there will be any additional monitoring or other rules that overlay the relief. These issues likely warrant detailed rules from the OECD, which raises the possibility that taxpayers will find themselves in the position of trying to interpret OECD guidance while waiting for countries to adopt this relief into law. Any system that calls off top-up taxes for U.S. multinational enterprise groups is only effective if every country adopts that relief; this raises the possibility that U.S. groups will find themselves having to invest resources to comply with a tax that is ultimately not applied to them.
The challenges the tax community has faced in preparing for and complying with Pillar Two can obscure the monumental undertaking that the project represents. Perhaps several years from now, when these and other issues have all been resolved, tax practitioners will be in a better position to reflect on the achievement of creating Pillar Two from scratch, aligning it with the U.S. tax system, and coordinating through the legislation of dozens of countries. For now, though, the current growing pains for the parties involved are both real and significant.
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