Study On The Settlement Of Tax Disputes Under International Investment Agreements

With the further development of economic globalization and regional economic integration,international investment has become more active.In the field of international investment,the establishment of tax regulations and tax policies and the improvement of settlement mechanism of tax disputes play an important role in the host country's investment.However,in theory and practice in the past,international investment agreements tend to exclude tax provisions which leads investors and the host country to solve the tax issues through only limited relief channels,such as domestic administrative reconsideration and administrative proceedings.But these methods for investors seem unfair and time-consuming.It is likely to discourage investors' motivation for investment.Later with the establishment of the mutual agreement procedure in tax conventions which can not solve the tax disputes completely,thus developed countries and international organizations are currently committed to international tax arbitration mechanism included in the tax agreements.However,under the tax conventions,the parties to the arbitration mechanism are the states,and investors can not directly participate in it.In order to better protect the interests of investors under the international investment agreements,the scope of the arbitration jurisdiction of the tax disputes is gradually liberalized.The purpose of this paper is to discuss the settlement of the tax disputes under international investment agreements,and to put forward some suggestions for the improvement of the tax regulations and the settlement mechanism of the disputes in China.At present,many domestic and foreign scholars study on the arbitrationmechanism of international tax conventions,but the practical cases are still rare.The main reason is that tax problems involve a country's sovereignty,and each country will worry that it will destroy national sovereignty if they grant the arbitration to solve the international tax disputes.And that's why China is unwilling to introduce the arbitration clause into the foreign tax treaties.However,the cases related to tax disputes in the field of international investment have increasingly come up.The international center for settlement of investment disputes has gradually liberalized,the acceptance of the cases related to the tax problems between the host country and the investors.This paper focuses on the settlement of tax disputes under investment agreements,analyzes the grounds of arbitration jurisdiction of the cases related to tax disputes.And it finally discusses that how to improve the tax provisions and its dispute settlement provisions in investment agreements in China.This paper is divided into three chapters:The first chapter is mainly about the analysis of the arbitrability of the tax disputes under the international investments.Firstly,this chapter discusses the international investment tax disputes and the arbitration mechanism under international investment agreements.Then,the paper discusses the feasibility of tax arbitration from the two aspects of the tax provisions and the provisions of the settlement of disputes.The second chapter discusses the arbitrability of tax disputes under international investment agreements from the perspective of practical cases related to the tax issues of international investment arbitration tribunal.The third chapter summarizes the status of international investment agreements on tax issues,as well as its deficiencies and gives some concrete suggestions on the problems of investment agreements in China.In the conclusion part,the author makes a summary of the improvement of the specific provisions of tax and disputes settlement under international investment agreements.