Interesting news from Uganda, where the government announced in its latest budget that it has finished formulating its new tax treaty policy, and will be renegotiating treaties that don’t comply. Seatini and ActionAid Uganda will no doubt chalk this up as a success! The news report linked to above also states that the the government plans to amend the awkwardly-worded anti-treaty-shopping clause in its Income Tax Act, although there are clearly still doubts about its application. According to a report in Tax Notes International, there’s an ongoing mutual agreement procedure between the Netherlands and Uganda to try to settle the ongoing Zain capital gains case, which turns on the applicability of that clause. 
So this is good timing for my working paper with Jalia Kangave, based on a submission we made to the Ugandan government’s review, to have been published by the International Centre for Tax and Development.
Here’s a link to that paper on Researchgate
When writing that paper, I thought that Uganda had a pretty good record of tax treaty negotiations, but some new visualisations of the ActionAid Tax Treaties Dataset suggest otherwise. For these I am indebted to Zack Korman, and to tax twitter for introducing me to him. Below are some maps Zach has made using the ‘source index’ I developed for the dataset (read more about that here). Red means a residence-based treaty that gives fewer taxing rights to the developing country, while green means a source-based treaty that gives it more taxing rights.
Links to high-res versions of individual images: Uganda map, Uganda bar chart, Vietnam, Mauritius, UK, Nordics
Uganda’s treaties are pretty red, meaning that most of its treaties restrict its taxing rights much more than average. Looking at the breakdown of the index shows that Uganda has some above-average withholding tax provisions, but its treaties are quite a lot worse than average in other areas. The slide show also gives some other countries for comparison. Vietnam’s treaties are mostly green, while Asian countries have got better deals from Mauritius (an offshore financial centre, not a developing country, in this context) than African ones. The UK’s treaties are pretty red, while the Nordics are very interesting: diverse in content, but consistent among themselves, giving good deals to Kenya and Sri Lanka, and worse ones to Tanzania and Bangladesh. This suggests that more source-based treaties with Nordic countries have been up for grabs for tough-negotiating developing countries.
Below I’ve posted some of Zach’s animated maps, on which it’s easier (and interesting) to follow the developments at earlier stages. There’s lots to comment on, but mostly I just keep watching them. The technical service fees map, at the bottom, is especially interesting, as it shows how countries have changed attitudes over time: watch how Pakistan suddenly changes position in the mid 1980s, for example.
Martin Hearson 
