Historical background¶
4. Progress had already been made towards the elimination of double taxation through bilateral conventions or unilateral measures when the Council of the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC) adopted its first Recommendation concerning double taxation on 25 February 1955. At that time, 70 bilateral general conventions had been signed between countries that are now members of the OECD. This was to a large extent due to the work commenced in 1921 by the League of Nations. This work led to the drawing up in 1928 of the first model bilateral convention and, finally, to the Model Conventions of Mexico (1943) and London (1946), the principles of which were followed with certain variants in many of the bilateral conventions concluded or revised during the following decade. Neither of these Model Conventions, however, was fully and unanimously accepted. Moreover, in respect of several essential questions, they presented considerable dissimilarities and certain gaps.
5. The increasing economic interdependence and co-operation of the member countries of the OEEC in the post-war period showed increasingly clearly the importance of measures for preventing international double taxation. The need was recognised for extending the network of bilateral tax conventions to all member countries of the OEEC, and subsequently of the OECD, several of which had so far concluded only very few conventions and some none at all. At the same time, harmonization of these conventions in accordance with uniform principles, definitions, rules, and methods, and agreement on a common interpretation, became increasingly desirable.
6. It was against this new background that the Fiscal Committee set to work in 1956 to establish a draft convention that would effectively resolve the double taxation problems existing between OECD member countries and that would be acceptable to all member countries. From 1958 to 1961, the Fiscal Committee prepared four interim Reports, before submitting in 1963 its final Report entitled Draft Double Taxation Convention on Income and Capital.1 The Council of the OECD adopted, on 30 July 1963, a Recommendation concerning the avoidance of double taxation and called upon the Governments of member countries, when concluding or revising bilateral conventions between them, to conform to that Draft Convention.
7. The Fiscal Committee of the OECD had envisaged, when presenting its Report in 1963, that the Draft Convention might be revised at a later stage following further study. Such a revision was also needed to take account of the experience gained by member countries in the negotiation and practical application of bilateral conventions, of changes in the tax systems of member countries, of the increase in international fiscal relations, and of the development of new sectors of business activity and the emergence of new complex business organisations at the international level. For all these reasons, the Fiscal Committee and, after 1971, its successor the Committee on Fiscal Affairs, undertook the revision of the 1963 Draft Convention and of the commentaries thereon. This resulted in the publication in 1977 of a new Model Convention and Commentaries.2
8. The factors that had led to the revision of the 1963 Draft Convention continued to exert their influence and, in many ways, the pressure to update and adapt the Model Convention to changing economic conditions progressively increased. New technologies were developed and, at the same time, there were fundamental changes taking place in the ways in which cross-borders transactions were undertaken. Methods of tax avoidance and evasion became more sophisticated. The globalisation and liberalisation of OECD economies also accelerated rapidly in the 1980s. Consequently, in the course of its regular work programme, the Committee on Fiscal Affairs and, in particular, its Working Party No. 1, continued after 1977 to examine various issues directly or indirectly related to the 1977 Model Convention. This work resulted in a number of reports, some of which recommended amendments to the Model Convention and its Commentaries.3
9. In 1991, recognizing that the revision of the Model Convention and the Commentaries had become an ongoing process, the Committee on Fiscal Affairs adopted the concept of an ambulatory Model Convention providing periodic and more timely updates and amendments without waiting for a complete revision. It was therefore decided to publish a revised updated version of the Model Convention which would take into account the work done since 1977 by integrating many of the recommendations made in the above-mentioned reports.
10. Because the influence of the Model Convention had extended far beyond the OECD member countries, the Committee also decided that the revision process should be opened up to benefit from the input of non-member countries, other international organisations and other interested parties. It was felt that such outside contributions would assist the Committee on Fiscal Affairs in its continuing task of updating the Model Convention to conform with the evolution of international tax rules and principles.
11. This led to the publication in 1992 of the Model Convention in a loose-leaf format. Unlike the 1963 Draft Convention and the 1977 Model Convention, the revised Model was not the culmination of a comprehensive revision, but rather the first step of an ongoing revision process intended to produce periodic updates and thereby ensure that the Model Convention continues to reflect accurately the views of member countries at any point in time.
11.1 Through one of these updates, produced in 1997, the positions of a number of non-member countries on the Model Convention were added in a second volume in recognition of the growing influence of the Model Convention outside the OECD countries (see below). At the same time, reprints of a number of previous reports of the Committee which had resulted in changes to the Model Convention were also added.