The global tax treaty network has historically consisted of bilateral tax treaties. Updating a bilateral tax treaty network has been described, within the context of BEPS Action 15 (Developing a Multilateral Instrument), as “burdensome” and “time-consuming”. A recently published empirical study looked at how long it takes founding OECD member countries* to update their bilateral tax treaty network. Conclusion? On average, it takes 18.58 years before a tax treaty is updated.

This article was published on the European Tax Blog, read the full text here.