Tax as a development issue

New data and working paper: measuring tax treaty negotiation outcomes

/ Martin Hearson

Today the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD) and ActionAid are launching a new dataset that I’ve developed over the last year. It’s the product of over a year’s work, mostly by an intrepid team of research assistants in the LSE law department, to code the content of over 500 tax treaties signed by developing countries. ActionAid, who funded the research assistants’ time, have also used the dataset to construct a league table for their campaigning work, and there’s a piece in the Guardian based on that. (I’m sure the headline, which criticises the UK, will provoke some debate.)

The aim of the dataset project is to make possible a whole lot of new research to get to the bottom of questions that have not been satisfactorily addressed in the literature to date. The jury is still out on whether tax treaties affect investment flows into developing countries, but do certain clauses matter more than others to investors? What determines the outcome of tax treaty negotiations: is it cooperation, power, or competence? What is a good outcome for a developing country from a tax treaty negotiation? Work on trade and investment agreements has already moved from a simple ‘is there a treaty?’ binary to studies based on the content of those agreements. With this dataset, we can do the same for tax treaties.

There’s also a working paper that I’ve written for ICTD, which sets out some of the initial conclusions I drew from simple descriptive work using the dataset. For example, here’s the chart showing how common treaty provisions that allow developing countries to tax foreign service providers have been over time. The difference between the two is that with a ‘service PE’, developing countries can only tax the company’s net profits, and only if it is physically present for a certain length of time; with a WHT clause, they can tax gross payments to foreign service providers, as most do in their domestic law, regardless of whether there is a physical presence.  The growth in both the provisions highlighted is quite notable.dataset1

The story for capital gains is more mixed. Article 13(4) is an anti-avoidance tool that allows a developing country to tax capital gains from the sale of a company whose value is mainly physical assets in the developing country, even if the company is located abroad. It’s becoming more common, which is not surprising since variations on it are included in both the OECD and UN model tax treaties. Article 13(5) gives a developing country the right to tax gains from the sale of any company resident in that country, even if the sale takes place abroad. Interestingly, this provision is becoming more scarce, though countries such as Vietnam have only recently begun to tax in this way in their domestic law. dataset2

I also constructed an index that evaluates the content of 24 different clauses within each tax treaty to assess how much of the developing country’s taxing rights it leaves intact (a higher value means a bigger share of taxing rights for the developing country). This chart shows that treaties between developing countries and OECD members are gradually becoming more favourable to the latter, while in contrast developing countries are starting to get better deals with countries outside the OECD.

Overall negotiated content by date of signature and type of treaty partner

dataset3

The downward trend is driven by falling withholding tax (WHT) rates, while the upward trend is primarily in permanent establishment (PE) provisions, as we can see by disaggregating the index into these different components.

Average values of category indexes for treaties signed in a given year

dataset4

This is new information that I don’t think people have been aware of before, so I’m quite excited about it. Here’s the summary of the working paper:

Measuring Tax Treaty Negotiation Outcomes:the ActionAid Tax Treaties Dataset

This paper introduces a new dataset that codes the content of 519 tax treaties signed by low- and lower-middle- income countries in Africa and Asia. Often called Double Taxation Agreements, bilateral tax treaties divide up the right to tax cross-border economic activity between their two signatories. When one of the signatories is a developing country that is predominantly a recipient of foreign investment, the effect of the tax treaty is to impose constraints on its ability to tax inward investors, ostensibly to encourage more investment.

The merits of tax treaties for developing countries have been challenged in critical legal literature for decades, and studies of whether or not they attract new investment into developing countries give contradictory and inconclusive results. These studies have rarely disaggregated the elements of tax treaties to determine which may be most pertinent to any investment-promoting effect. Meanwhile, as developing countries continue to negotiate, renegotiate, review and terminate tax treaties, comparative data on negotiating histories and outcomes is not easily obtained.

The new dataset fills both these gaps. Using it, this paper demonstrates how tax treaties are changing over time. The restrictions they impose on the rate of withholding tax developing countries can levy on cross-border payments have intensified since 1970. In contrast, the permanent establishment threshold, which specifies when a foreign company’s profits become taxable in a developing country, has been falling, giving developing countries more opportunity to tax foreign investors. The picture with respect to capital gains tax and other provisions is mixed. As a group, OECD countries appear to be moving towards treaties with developing countries that impose more restrictions on the latter’s taxing rights, while non-OECD countries appear to be allowing developing countries to retain more taxing rights than in the past. These overall trends, however, mask some surprising differences between the positions of individual industrialised and emerging economies. These findings pose more questions than they answer, and it is hoped that this paper and the dataset it accompanies will stimulate new research on tax treaties.

Tax treaties in sub-Saharan Africa: a critical review

/ Martin Hearson / 2 Comments

The report I authored for Tax Justice Network-Africa is now available. It’s based on field research done a year ago and has been a little while getting into print.

Here’s a link to read it online at academia.edu

Here’s a link to download the PDF

Tax treaties in sub-Saharan Africa report cover

And here’s the introduction:

There is growing attention on the question of tax treaties signed by developing countries. The costs of tax treaties to developing countries have been highlighted in recent years by NGOs such as ActionAid and SOMO. During 2014, an influential IMF paper warned that developing countries “would be well-advised to sign treaties only with considerable caution,” and the OECD, as part of its Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project, proposes to add text to the commentary of its model treaty to help countries decide “whether a treaty should be concluded with a State but also…whether a State should seek to modify or replace an existing treaty or even, as a last resort, terminate a treaty.”

Meanwhile, some developing countries seem recently to have become concerned by the negative impacts of some of their treaties. Rwanda and South Africa have successfully renegotiated their agreements with Mauritius. Argentina and Mongolia have cancelled or renegotiated several agreements. Responding to this pressure, two of the developed countries whose treaty networks have raised concerns, the Netherlands and Ireland, have begun a process of review.

To investigate this apparent shift in opinion among policymakers, and to see what lessons can be drawn by other developing countries, Tax Justice Network Africa commissioned this study of current policy towards tax treaties in Uganda and Zambia, two countries that appear to be questioning past decisions. Fieldwork, which consisted of interviews with government officials and private sector tax advisers, took place in Kampala and Lusaka in September 2014.

Uganda has announced a review of its policy towards tax treaties, while Zambia is renegotiating several of its treaties. The Ugandan review has several motivations, according to finance ministry officials. The lack of a politically enforced policy to underpin negotiations is one concern. “When I go to negotiate, all I have is my own judgement,” according to a negotiator. “We thought that cabinet should express itself.” Officials are also concerned about the taxation of technical services provided by professionals in the oil industry, and are asking questions about the relatively poor deal Uganda got in its as yet unratified agreement with China.

Zambia, it seems, is keen to update very old treaties that were negotiated on poor terms by over-zealous officials in the 1970s. But a recent treaty signed with China on poor terms has created a difficult precedent, dragging down the terms of its recent negotiation with the UK. Zambia is also encumbered with several colonial-era treaties that need urgent attention.

This report is divided into four following sections. Section 2 describes the historical development of sub-Saharan Africa’s tax treaty network, including some of the reasons given for its development. Uganda and Zambia are used as examples. Section 3 looks at some of the core vulnerabilities in the content of tax treaties signed by African countries, set in the context of weaknesses in their domestic laws. Section 4 provides a critical perspective on recent initiatives taken by individual countries, regional organisations and other international organisations.

Section 5 provides recommendations for African countries. In summary, they should:

  • Review all their existing tax treaties and domestic legislation, to identify areas where they are most vulnerable to revenue loss. This should include permanent establishment definitions, protection from treaty shopping, and withholding and capital gains taxes.
  • Formulate ambitious national models by applying a “best available” approach to existing models (EAC, COMESA, UN), current treaties, and domestic legislation, none of which are currently adequate.
  • Identify red lines for negotiations from within these models.
  • Based on investment and remittance data, request renegotiations of treaties that have the greatest actual (or potential in terms of capital gains) cost. These renegotiations should be conducted on the basis of an improved distribution of taxing rights, not a “balanced” negotiation.
  • Cancel these high-impact treaties if the red lines cannot be obtained.
  • Incorporate an assessment of tax foregone due to tax treaties into an annual breakdown of tax expenditures.
  • Ensure that all tax treaties are subject to parliamentary approval as part of the ratification process.
  • Ensure that future updates to provisions of the UN and OECD model treaties, or to their commentaries and reservations/observations, reflect the positions set out in their national models.
  • Strengthen the African model treaties (EAC, COMESA, SADC) so that they act as opposite poles to the OECD model, rather than compromises between the UN and OECD models.

Some follow-up on parliamentary scrutiny of the UK-Senegal treaty

/ Martin Hearson

As my last post anticipated, the ratification of the UK-Senegal tax treaty was debated in parliament last week. It was great that a debate on the impact of a tax treaty between the UK and a developing country happened at all. Some important issues came up:

  • What is the role of the Department for International Development in the UK’s treaty policy with respect to developing countries? None, on the basis of the reply from the minister, David Gauke.
  • Why is there no cost-benefit or development impact analysis of the UK’s treaties with developing countries? Mr Gauke said that it would not be possible to do this in a meaningful way, although as this post by Francis Weyzig points out, Ireland and the Netherlands have both now published analyses that do consider the effects of their treaties on developing countries.
  • Does the UK government bear any moral responsibility for the outcome of a negotiation with another sovereign state? That is certainly an interesting point for further consideration.

This was a good start in comparison to last year’s discussion of the UK-Zambia treaty, but these topics were still only skated over. The format of these ‘debates’ is always the same: the opposition shadow minister asks some questions, the minister responds from his briefing notes, and then the committee votes ‘yes’. It is near impossible to have a real discussion about substantive matters, such as the UK’s red line on a withholding tax clause for technical service fees (discussed below). This is partly because of the mountain of treaty detail within which substantive issues are hidden, but also because all parliament can do is vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ after the treaty has been signed.

There are two things the UK could do about this, which other countries have done. First, it could commission a comparative review, along the lines of those that have now been conducted for Ireland and the Netherlands, which highlights the main distinctive features of its treaties with developing countries so that non specialist MPs can engage with them meaningfully. Second, it could publish its treaty negotiating position, as Germany and the US have both done, with an opportunity for public and parliamentary debate on this position in general terms.

Now, some technical discussion. The night before the debate, I bumped into one of the British negotiators, who said he was “not very impressed” with my post on the treaty. The next day, the Labour opposition asked some questions based on input from ActionAid, which followed the same lines as my comments. The minister responded with much the same criticism I’d heard the previous night, so I’m going here to set the record straight on the technical points, insofar as I can from my non-technical background.

Technical service fees

I stated last week that “this treaty does not include a clause permitting Senegal to tax fees for technical services paid to the UK,” but this was imprecise wording. As Mr Gauke pointed out, the treaty does permit such fees to be taxed in Senegal, but with a major restriction. They can only be taxed in Senegal if the British recipient of the fees has a physical presence in Senegal for 183 days in a year. Even then, the fees can only be taxed as net profits, not gross fees as the standalone clause would have allowed for. The whole debate at the UN on this clause begins from the view that a physical presence is increasingly irrelevant in the 21st century economy, and that it is very difficult for developing countries to get an accurate view of a service provider’s net profits.

As the minister continued, “Senegal’s approach to the taxation of services differs from that of the UK,” and this is one area where the UK approach prevailed. This appears to be a red line for the UK now, but it’s worth noting that (on a quick count) Great Britain has nine treaties with sub-Saharan countries that do permit them to tax technical services without a physical presence. Senegal is arguably therefore disadvantaged relative to quite a few of its regional neighbours.

Supervisory activities

As I noted last week, the UK-Senegal treaty doesn’t follow the UN model treaty [pdf] wording on supervisory activities in connection with a building site, which states (my emphasis):

The term “permanent establishment” also encompasses: (a) A building site, a construction, assembly or installation project or supervisory activities in connection therewith, but only if such site, project or activities last more than six months

I said in my post that this means “supervisory activities associated with a building site in Senegal conducted by a British firm will not be taxable in Senegal,” but as Mr Gauke clarified, the treaty “does allow that” in practice. This is because the commentary to the OECD model tax treaty has been amended to incorporate it. It states in paragraph 5.17:

On-site planning and supervision of the erection of a building are covered by paragraph 3. States wishing to modify the text of the paragraph to provide expressly for that result are free to do so in their bilateral conventions.

The International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation (IBFD), in a commentary on the differences between the UN and OECD models, seems to concur that there is no longer any substantive difference between the two on this point:

According to the UN Model, supervisory activities are covered by this provision, irrespective of whether they are performed by the main contractor or subcontractor. The OECD Model does not include these activities in the text of the construction clause. According to the OECD Commentary, supervisory activities were, until 2003, explicitly subsumed under the construction clause provided the work was performed by the main contractor itself. Supervisory activities performed by a subcontractor were not, however, considered to be covered by this provision. This difference between the OECD and UN Models disappeared due to the changes to the OECD Commentary in 2003. The supervisory activities of a subcontractor were then also considered to be covered by the provision.

But the difference does seem to be important to many countries. They prefer to take the UN option of explicitly providing for the taxation of supervisory activities, rather than leaving it to a clarification in the commentary on page 101 of the 496-page model treaty. Turning to the reservations and observations published alongside the OECD model, twenty countries, including six OECD members, have made an official note along the lines that they reserve the right to have the supervisory activities wording included in their treaties. They are: Australia, Korea, Slovenia, Slovak Republic, Mexico, Portugal, Albania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Hong Kong, Serbia, Argentina, Malaysia, the People’s Republic of China, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand, Vietnam, India, and Indonesia. There is also the following anomalous note:

Bulgaria does not adhere to the interpretation, given in paragraph 17 of the Commentary on Article 5, and is of the opinion that supervision of a building site or a construction project, where carried on by another person, are not covered by paragraph 3 of the Article, if not expressly provided for.

Royalties for TV and radio broadcasts

I also pointed out that the treaty was unusual in not including a reference to TV and radio broadcasts in its definition of royalties. The UN model states (my emphasis):

The term “royalties” as used in this Article means payments of any kind received as a consideration for the use of, or the right to use, any copyright of literary, artistic or scientific work including cinematograph films, or films or tapes used for radio or television broadcasting,

Again, I said that this meant such payments could not be taxed by Senegal. The minister responded that, “the OECD commentary on the provision makes clear that cinematographic films include material for TV broadcast.” It does indeed state at paragraph 12.10 that:

Rents in respect of cinematograph films are also treated as royalties, whether such films are exhibited in cinemas or on the television.

But this is a little more restrictive than the UN wording, as there is no mention of radio. Of course, this may be splitting hairs, especially as only Argentina and Vietnam have observations in the OECD model on this point. But this time the IBFD discussion seems to support the view that there is a substantive difference here:

As the OECD Model does not include, in the definition of the term “royalties”, payments made as a consideration for the use of, or the right to use, films or tapes used for radio or television broadcasting, the UN Model deviates in this respect from the OECD Model.

Questions the opposition should ask about the new UK-Senegal tax treaty

/ Martin Hearson

Back in February, the UK and Senegal signed a bilateral tax treaty. The treaty is up for ratification this week, so I thought it time to take a look. Ratification happens through the delegated legislation committee, and entails very little debate. The last time a treaty between the UK and a developing country was ratified, I thought it was a shame that there had not been more discussion, which is why I’m writing in advance this time. I’ve also commented in the past, as did ActionAid and Mike Lewis, on the Danish treaty with Ghana.

So what questions might an interested Shadow Financial Secretary ask during this ratification debate? Here are three suggestions.

First, they might ask about a few of the provisions within the treaty that disadvantage Senegal and that seem to go against modern negotiating trends. The table below shows some provisions within the UK-Senegal treaty that follow the OECD model (which favours the developed country) rather than the UN model (which is supposed to reflect a good balance in a negotiation between a developed and a developing country). The first of the three percentage columns shows that these are all provisions that have been included in the majority of treaties signed by developing countries in recent years; the second shows that they are included in the majority of Senegal’s treaties; the third shows how often the UK has conceded them to developing countries.

Selected provisions from the UK-Senegal tax treaty in context

Data source: ActionAid tax treaties dataset, forthcoming

The treaty is particularly unusual in that supervisory activities associated with a building site in Senegal conducted by a British firm will not be taxable in Senegal, nor will royalties paid to the UK for radio and TV programmes broadcast in Senegal. Both of these provisions are included in around 90% of tax treaties signed by developing countries, but are omitted from this one. It would certainly be interesting to ask why.

Second, it is notable that this treaty does not include a clause permitting Senegal to tax fees for technical services paid to the UK. This is something that Senegal’s chief negotiator has for years advocated strongly for, including in this submission to the UN tax committee [pdf]. The UK has many older treaties with developing countries that include this provision, but more recently it seems to have changed position, opposing them. In this negotiation, it looks like Senegal made a concession on this point. This is a contentious issue at the UN tax committee, but the committee – which has members from the UK and Senegal – looks to be heading towards including it within its model treaty. It would therefore be very interesting for politicians to debate the UK’s position.

Third, the ratification debate on this treaty could be an opening for a broader discussion of what the UK aims to achieve through its tax treaties with developing countries. To set this in context, in the chart below, every point represents a tax treaty signed by a developing country, with the vertical axis showing how source-based it is (that is, how much its content permits the developing country to tax investors from the treaty partner). The higher the point, the more the balance of the treaty tends towards the developing country’s favour. There’s a leisurely upward trend.

Source/residence balance in tax treaties: UK and Senegal highlighted

Data source: index based on the forthcoming ActionAid tax treaties dataset

The UK’s agreements with developing countries are in red, while Senegal’s are in blue. The UK-Senegal treaty is purple. While it looks to be about average for both countries, it is certainly one of the more restrictive (“residence-based”) treaties signed by developing countries in recent years. This seems to be typical of treaties signed recently by the UK, but a worse deal for Senegal than it has obtained for a few years. The implication that the UK is one of the toughest tax negotiators with developing countries is surely worth political interrogation, at a time when its Department for International Development is urging developing countries to improve tax collection.

Is it or isn’t it a spillover?

/ Martin Hearson

Last week’s Global Tax Policy Conference at Maastricht University on “international spillovers in taxation” has got me thinking. In particular, I was fascinated by Belema Obuoforibo’s presentation on the IBFD’s methodology for ‘spillover analyses’ (here is a link to an IBFD Powerpoint describing it). The term ‘spillover’ comes from the IMF, a term they use in economic analysis more generally to refer to “the impact of policy actions in one country on others” and around which the IMF framed a whole policy paper. Since its mention in the famous international organisations’ report to the G-20 [pdf], spillover analysis has become a common civil society demand, and the Netherlands and Ireland have gone on to commission them, with a focus on the interplay between their tax treaties with developing countries and certain provisions of their domestic tax law.

But a ‘spillover analysis’ is not the same as an ‘impact assessment’, and I think it’s important to understand the distinction.

The IMF’s recent paper on spillovers in international taxation distinguishes between ‘base’ spillovers, in which an action by one country affects another country without that country doing anything in response, and ‘strategic’ spillovers, in which the change creates an incentive for the second country to change its own policies – tax competition being the obvious example. All very interesting, but I sometimes find it tricky to see how the IMF’s definition applies to the specific areas discussed later on the same report.

One reason for this is that a ‘spillover’ effect from one country on another implies that the affected country is a passive victim. This is not the only way in which one country’s tax system might affect another’s. The decision by a developing country to sign a treaty, or to adopt an international norm, makes it an active participant, but that doesn’t diminish the impact on it of doing so.

A second issue is that ‘spillover analysis’ in practice has tended to focus on how one individual country’s tax system might be different to the norm. Following the Dutch spillover analysis, the government noted that Dutch treaties with developing countries were generally on the same terms as those countries had secured with comparable treaty partners. The IBFD’s methodology is based on how aspects of one country’s tax system compare with similar countries. So the growing practice of spillover analysis, it seems, considers impacts relative to the international average, not absolute impacts. It is a way of finding out if a country is worse or better than average, rather than seeking out all positive or negative impacts.

Let’s consider some examples from the area of tax treaties, to illustrate how these limitations play out in practice:

1. Is it a ‘spillover’ if the affected country actively opened itself up to the vulnerability?

Ireland didn’t used to be a tax haven. It used to be a ‘high tax’ jurisdiction like most OECD countries. Its transformation into a hub used for base erosion and profit shifting is relatively recent, and many of its tax treaties predate this. The changes to Ireland’s tax system transformed its tax treaty network into a major headache for countries such as Zambia, and it seems quite right to describe these effects as spillovers: treaty partners could not have anticipated them when agreeing terms in their tax treaties.

The same could probably be said of the Mauritius-India treaty, which originally predates Mauritius’ generous offshore regime. But it couldn’t be said of Mauritius’ treaties with many African countries, which they signed up to at a time when the risk of treaty shopping through Mauritius would have been clear. This is not a ‘spillover’ of Mauritius’ tax system, because it was a conscious choice taken by the developing countries. But it would be a shame if any analysis of the impact of Mauritius’ treaty network didn’t consider these costs.

2. Is precedent in tax treaty negotiations a strategic spillover?

When Zambia signed a treaty with China containing much lower withholding rates than it had previously agreed to, it may not have anticipated the British reaction, which was to request a renegotiated treaty on similar terms. Zambia also wanted to renegotiate with the UK, mainly to seek improved powers for cooperation and information exchange with the British tax authorities. The implication of the Chinese treaty, however, was that the UK expected similar terms in return for Zambia’s demands, significantly lowering the Zambian tax take from British investors. It seems to me that this was a ‘spillover’ effect of China’s aggressive negotiating position…but I suspect it would be unlikely to be picked up in any ‘spillover analysis’.

3. Are most-favoured-nation effects spillovers?

In April 2003, Venezuela and Spain signed a treaty with a most favoured-nation (MFN) clause in its interest article, which would be triggered if either country subsequently signed a treaty with a lower maximum rate in the interest article. In May 2006, the bilateral MFN clause in its interest article was triggered through a kind of domino effect: Estonia and the Netherlands signed a treaty granting exclusive residence taxation rights over interest; this activated the MFN clause in the September 2003 Spain-Estonia treaty, which in turn activated the MFN clause in the Venezuela-Spain treaty. As a result, according to an article in Tax Notes International, “Venezuela’s treaty with Spain has undoubtedly become the most favorable tax treaty executed by Venezuela to date.”

This was a policy action by two countries that had ramifications for two other countries, but which they should have anticipated when they agreed to the clause. The inclusion of a symmetrical clause, which could be activated by Spain as well as Venezuela, may have been a negotiating error by the latter. But was the MFN activation a spillover?

4. Is it a spillover if a country is just an aggressive negotiator?

The countries that have tended to do spillover analysis so far are those facing accusations that they’re used for treaty shopping. And the main policy response, at least from the Netherlands, seems to have focused on adding anti-abuse provisions into its treaties. What if there is no treaty shopping, but instead just a set of treaties that take most of the taxing rights away from developing countries? As I noted in point 1, the developing countries actively signed up to these treaties at some point in their histories. The IMF spillover paper sounds a cautious note about tax treaties because of the fiscal costs to developing countries of limiting their source taxing rights, but it’s not clear (to me at least) how the plain vanilla impact of the source/residence split could meet the definition of a spillover.

5. Is it a spillover if it’s no different to the norm?

Consider many developed countries’ unwillingness to share the right to tax their shipping firms with the developing countries whose waters they use, and who are in some cases very keen to tax the profits from shipping. Developed countries have been relatively united on this, so even if we accepted that the case described in point 4 above was a ‘spillover’ effect, I think the implication of the IBFD’s methodology would be to find no negative spillover from the hardline stance taken by, say, the UK. But just because this ‘policy action’ is consistent with comparable treaties and with the model conventions, does that mean countries should not assess the impact on developing countries of the policy stance?

In conclusion, it seems to me there is a risk that the focus on the concept of ‘spillover effects’ might lead to an overly narrow analysis of the impacts of a jurisdiction’s tax policy actions on developing countries. Or, to put it another way, could the choice of terms used to discuss this issue have linguistic spillover effects?

Update: Joe Stead points out that I have slightly undersold the 2011 International Organisations’ report to the G-20:

The Mopani saga and Zambia’s windfall tax: an alternative reading

/ Martin Hearson

In 2010, Zambian NGOs obtained a leaked copy of an audit report conducted for the Zambia Revenue Authority into Mopani Copper Mine, a subsidiary of the Swiss behemoth Glencore. I was working at ActionAid at the time, where we took an active interest in the case. The particular allegation concerning systematic transfer pricing abuse contained in the report was consistent with the experience of many tax authorities, so much so that many Latin American countries have a specific transfer pricing rule to combat it. And with the Grant Thornton imprimatur, it seemed like the perfect story. The company denied it, but then of course they would.

A group of NGOs filed a complaint with Swiss National Contact Point for the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (not to be confused with the OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines), triggering an investigation, but with the parties disputing the facts, there was no concrete outcome. The European Investment Bank, which had lent money to Mopani, conducted an investigation, but so far the findings have not been published. The whole thing feels frustratingly inconclusive.

So while I was in Zambia recently I thought I would look into the story. I have pieced together the account below from interviews with current and former government officials, and with tax advisers from the private sector. It is no doubt only one interpretation of the facts, given to me by stakeholders with their own interests to defend. But it is certainly an interesting one.

In the mid 2000s, as copper prices rose dramatically, the lack of tax revenue from copper mines started to become an issue in Zambia. So in 2008, the government decided to break the fiscal stability clauses in its agreements with mining companies, and enact new taxes.

Historical Copper Prices - Copper Price History Chart

There were two: the windfall tax was based on the value of copper extracted, and the variable profits tax was levied when profitability exceeded a certain amount. There’s an excellent paper by David Manley [pdf], who was in the Zambian finance ministry at the time, explaining all of this. The idea, so I was told, was to begin with a moderate tax on sales, and meanwhile to build capacity in the Zambia Revenue Authority to administer a variable profits tax.

Officials were frustrated, however, that the original proposal to levy the withholding tax at between five and 15 percent (depending on the price of the copper sold) was rejected by politicians, who instead set it at between 25 and 75 percent. This was politically unsustainable in a country where the mining industry is willing and able to lay off hundreds or thousands of unskilled workers in a standoff with the government, as it is doing now in a dispute over VAT refunds, and (so I was told by one researcher) powerful enough to manipulate the exchange rate.

“At the time the mines were in the development stage, and it would have killed them to tax on sales,” a former official told me. According to a tax adviser, “It was pushing the mines into a loss.” Manley is more understated:

The mining companies were upset by the unilateral revocation of the Development Agreements and some refused to pay the new taxes. The announcement was followed shortly after by the onset of the global financial crisis. Copper prices fell sharply and marginal mines started laying off workers.

In 2009, the government backed down, and the windfall tax was repealed. It is here that the Mopani audit comes into play. The ZRA, with support from Norwegian technical assistants, began to conduct (or rather commission) audits of all the mining companies. The purpose was to start enforcing the variable profits tax with a clear idea of the mines’ cost bases. This targeted approach would work well with limited tax authority capacity and only a few very large mines. As the Mopani audit report makes clear, the company wasn’t very cooperative with the audit. Here I paraphrase what a former official told me:

“It was a tactic.” It’s what you do in an audit if they are not supplying the information. There was a lot of missing information and so the report was written with the intention of giving it to the company and saying ‘either you provide the information, or we will tax you on this basis.’ So of course you take an aggressive position in the audit report to create an incentive for them to supply the information. Then it was leaked and it all exploded internationally. Over time, some information came and we settled with them. Of course it was lower than the amount in the audit.

According to this official’s version of events, the audit tells a tale of a company doing its best to frustrate a tax authority by obfuscating, but for that same reason it can’t be read as a final word on Mopani’s tax affairs.

As for taxing mining profits, it now seems that Zambia’s new government has given up on this altogether, opting instead for a much higher royalty rate – effectively a return to the windfall tax. The industry is unhappy. Worse still, “as audit firms we’ve been rendered useless,” a tax adviser said to me.

But one way to interpret this in the light of the Mopani audit is that, if firms make it difficult for developing countries to administer taxes on their net income, they risk being taxed on gross instead. Zambia has, after all, already raised withholding taxes on management and consultancy fees to 20 percent.