OECD plugs remote-work gaps as courts, campaigners turn up the tax heat

OECD redraws the map for home-office taxation

The Big Picture: Working from a beach in Bali? The OECD’s 2025 update to its Model Tax Convention just told every CFO how, and where, that income should be taxed. The freshly minted guidance, released yesterday and hailed as providing “greater certainty for governments and businesses,” (OECD press release) tackles two post-pandemic headaches: cross-border remote work and the taxation of natural-resource income.

The Details:
* For remote workers, the OECD now spells out when a foreign home office creates a permanent establishment, the trigger that lets a host country tax corporate profits. The document lays out factors such as duration, core activities, and employer control to determine nexus.
* On natural resources, the model adds an alternative treaty article ensuring that oil, gas, and mineral income is taxed “where it occurs,” strengthening source-country rights, big news for commodity-rich developing economies.
* Additional tweaks aim to "enhance consistency in treaty interpretation," the OECD said, giving advisors the rulebook they’ve been begging for.

Why It Matters / What They’re Saying: Multinationals that loosened their location policies in 2020 now face a tighter compliance corset. The OECD argued the changes will "support fair and efficient cross-border business taxation," while tax lawyers warn that payroll, VAT, and transfer-pricing footprints could all shift overnight. Expect treaty renegotiations and HR policy rewrites, to follow.

Around the Tax World

• EU transparency unlocked. The General Court ruled that documents of the EU’s Code of Conduct Group aren’t automatically confidential, overturning the Council’s refusal to publish them (KPMG EU Tax Centre).
• HMRC goes straight to the median. New guidance says UK tax inspectors will default to the median of an arm’s-length range when a company’s transfer-pricing falls outside it (International Tax Review).
• Greenpeace turns up the volume. As UN Tax Convention talks wrapped in Nairobi, the NGO urged negotiators to bake in a “polluter pays” principle before written submissions land on 5 December (Greenpeace International).
• Courts keep swinging in TP fights. Recent wins for tax authorities against Apple, Glencore, and Nestlé show judges are increasingly siding with substance over form, a Bloomberg Law overview notes (Bloomberg Law).

Tax Stat of the Day

Five-for-five. Transfer-pricing professionals have predicted rising disputes for five straight years, mirroring the court clashes highlighted above (Bloomberg Law).

Looking Ahead

All eyes now shift to 5 December, when countries must file their next round of proposals for the UN Tax Convention, setting the stage for a December debate that could reshape global tax rules.