'Permanent establishment' in tax treaties

Abstract

The purpose of this project is twofold: to consider the meaning of the expression 'permanent establishment' as used in international double tax agreements and to adumbrate the principles which apply, or might apply, to the interpretation of tax treaties generally. The two purposes are interrelated and complementary. Discussions of abstract principles of statutory interpretation have rarely, if ever, been satisfactory in isolation from specific applications, and it cannot be expected that a set of cosmic dictates lies waiting in vacuum for discovery by those charged with the interpretation of tax conventions. On the other hand, since the writer's thesis will be that the status and purpose of double tax agreements justify, and have sometimes induced, a special approach to interpretation, the meaning of any particular term in international tax law cannot adequately be expounded without reference to this approach.