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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the Double Irish and Dutch Sandwich (DIDS) tax schemes used by international companies. Companies using these schemes are enabled to transfer a large amount of their profits to offshore tax havens by using wholly owned subsidiaries located in Ireland and the Netherlands. This paper also analyzes the US General Anti-Avoidance Rule (GAAR) to see whether it can effectively detect and counteract this scheme. This analysis is furthermore enhanced by applying the Mauritian GAAR through Section 90 of the Income Tax Act to the said schemes.

Concerning research methods, the library and the internet will be the main sources of information to be used for this paper. Through the usage of library research, the Mauritian Income Tax Act, US GAAR, European Commission decisions and scholar writings will further enhance this paper on the structure and preventive actions that can be taken against the DIDS scheme. This paper will also use a case study coupled with a theoretical analysis of current anti-avoidance rules.

The paper then concludes that it is possible to counteract the schemes using the Mauritian law but under specific circumstances. It is then revealed that there is a fundamental flaw in the current tax systems, which is the inability to regulate the intangible nature of resources and technology-based transactions.

To the author's knowledge, this paper is among the first literature on the subject of DIDS strategies conducted in the context of Mauritius.

A taxpayer who gets caught under Part VII of the Mauritius Income Tax Act is subjected to a corrective measure only in the form of payment of the amount of tax that would have been due in the absence of the avoidance arrangement, but the consequences set out in the same section do not result in any disincentive to the taxpayer that would ensure the prevention of the occurrence of such type of anti-avoidance practices in the future. This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of the anti-avoidance provisions in the Mauritius legislation as a weapon against impermissible tax avoidance, and the study also intends to critically analyse the remedies available against taxpayers who enter into impermissible tax avoidance transactions.

The methodology adopted for this qualitative study consists of a critical analysis and comparative legal review of the relevant legislation, case laws and literature. The anti-avoidance provisions of the Mauritius legislation will be compared with similar provisions of legislations of countries that have rigid preventive rules for anti-avoidance practices, and the selected countries are the UK and Australia because each country has been successful in diminishing the tax avoidances practices further to the imposition of penalties for impermissible tax avoidance. The black letter approach will also be used through which existing legal provisions, judicial doctrines, scholar articles and budget speeches governing anti-avoidance provisions for each country identified will be analysed.

Further to an analysis of the substantial differences between Mauritius anti-avoidance legal provisions and those of the UK and Australia, it is found that the backing of corrective actions by penalties act as a disincentive to prohibit impermissible anti-avoidance practices. The study concludes that, where there is abuse of law, the law needs to provide for penalties that must be suffered by the abuser, and hence, the study calls for an amendment in the Mauritius Income Tax Act to strengthen anti-avoidance provisions, by adopting similar provisions of the laws of Australia and the UK.

At present, there is no Mauritius literature on the researched topic, and this study will be one of the first academic writings on the subject of penalties for impermissible tax avoidance in Mauritius. The study is a new and unique topic in Mauritius, and for that reason, the study will largely rely on foreign sources that deal with penalties for impermissible tax avoidance, and this will include the Australian Taxation Administrative Act 1953, Australian case laws and the UK Finance Act 2016. This study is being carried out with the view to provide insightful recommendations to the stakeholders concerned in Mauritius to enhance the revenue collection avenues and methodologies for the Mauritius revenue authorities.

While Mauritius is ranked as the fastest growing financial centre in Africa and the second-fastest-growing offshore financial centre (OFC) in the word by the New World Health in 2019, the country is facing severe allegations that it is progressing at the expense of other developing countries. In this respect, this paper aims to assess the contribution of the Mauritius OFC, the robustness of tax avoidance and evasion laws, the endeavours undertaken by the Mauritius Government to promote Mauritius OFC and the alleged classification of Mauritius as a tax haven.

To achieve the above research objectives, this paper will adopt the black letter approach. That is, the relevant legislation and case laws will be scrutinised. Also, books, journal articles, newspaper articles, reports from international bodies amongst others will be used. The research methodology also comprising a critical analysis which implies that existing studies conducted on the subject matter of this research will be assessed and the extent to which the researcher agrees with the existing work will be weighed.

Based on the critical analysis, this paper recommends that the Mauritius Income Tax Act be amended to provide for punitive and corrective actions for those engaged in impermissible tax avoidance. Additionally, for transparency and clarity, it is suggested that the Mauritius Revenue Authority (MRA) clarifies in a practice note the factors that it considers when determining the tax liability that should have been payable or when detecting tax avoidance cases. Similarly, to discourage tax evasion, the fines and penalties for tax-evading offences should be more strict and a regulatory framework for tax practitioners need to be set up.

To the author’s knowledge, this paper is amongst the first academic research that emphasises the position of Mauritius as an OFC and critically analysed the related laws relating to the financial world.

Numerous policies are established in Mauritius to attract foreign direct investment, but at the same time, severe concerns were raised concerning the erosion of Mauritian tax base, which is witnessed by the decrease in the percentage of tax revenue to gross domestic product in recent years. To avoid these issues, in 2019, the Mauritian legislator has domesticated the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) BEPS 2013 Action 3 on controlled foreign company (CFC) in its income tax legislation. As such, the purpose of this study is to critically assess the implications of CFC rules of Mauritius to reduce tax avoidance in the light of international tax competition.

To achieve the research objective, this study will adopt a black letter approach by analysing the rules and regulations of various jurisdiction as well as international standards on CFCs and other tax avoidance legal provisions. A comparative analysis will be conducted between Mauritian laws on CFCs and the corresponding legislation of the UK and the USA, which are selected to assess the developed world’s position on strict CFC rules.

A hasty implementation of CFC rules leads to various complexities like interpretation issues and diminishing the competitiveness of the country to multinationals. In this respect, there is the risk of a trade-off between tax collected and foreign direct investment in the country. Consequently, the research recommends that Mauritius reforms its CFC legislation by extending the scope of tax exemptions for intra-group financing income, for the first year of CFC’s operation with the possibility of offsetting foreign taxes and for the Mauritius Revenue Authority to establish detailed guidelines on the determination of CFC income and its attribution for tax purposes in Mauritius.

Existing literature has to a great extent focused on the role of CFC rules as a tax avoidance measure and on the divergence or convergence between domestic CFC legislation against the OECD recommendations (Dourado, 2015; Xu, 2018; Beebeejaun et al., 2023). However, limited literature is available on the evaluation of the purpose of CFC rules enacted by a developing country being Mauritius in the context of the global competitive market, to which this research aims at filling the gap.

One of the most common forms of international tax avoidance is transfer pricing by multinational enterprises. The research will investigate on the factors that contribute to transfer pricing abuses. At present, there is no substantial and extensive transfer pricing rule in Mauritius. This paper aims to analyse the legal approaches to tackle transfer pricing issues that are undertaken by some countries whose taxation regime is similar to Mauritius. The selected countries are South Africa and UK. The objective behind the comparative study is to come up with the appropriate preventive and corrective measures for Mauritius.

The methodology adopted for this research consists of a critical analysis and comparative legal review of the relevant legislation, case law and literature. A minor quantitative analysis of the transfer pricing problem in Mauritius will be conducted, in terms of which interviews will be conducted with officials from different institutions in Mauritius.

The study will conclude that the absence of explicit formal rules on transfer pricing allows businesses to use the country to manipulate transfer prices to avoid paying taxes. Therefore, an amendment to Mauritius laws and regulatory framework is required to dissuade multinationals to engage in transfer pricing abuses. The study will conclude that the scope and application of the arm’s length principle needs to be formally set out in legislation and also, the use of Advance Pricing Agreements will also be recommended.

The research is among the first studies that compare Mauritius legal provisions on transfer pricing with that of South Africa and UK. The research is unique as it intends to provide fruitful recommendation to stakeholders in Mauritius to enhance the existing legal framework on the subject.

Value added tax (VAT) is an indirect tax that is payable upon the consumption of goods and services. Recently, the Government of Mauritius has introduced a new set of rules to extend the VAT system to non-resident providers of electronic services to consumers based in Mauritius. The purpose of this research paper is therefore to assess the adequacy and efficiency of the recent VAT amendments in terms of compliance requirements and collection measures and to identify loopholes in the present legal provisions.

The methodologies for the research are in essence comprised of the black letter approach which will analyse the legal provisions relating to VAT in Mauritius. A comparative analysis will also be conducted to find out the corresponding legal provisions relating to VAT on digital services in South Africa.

This research paper has highlighted some recommendations inspired by the laws of South Africa and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Based Erosion Profiting Shifting action plan which may be of use to Mauritius stakeholders when devising regulations on the imposition of VAT on foreign suppliers of digital services under Section 14B of the VAT Act.

To the author's best knowledge, this research paper is the first study conducted in the field of indirect taxation of foreign suppliers of digital services to residents of Mauritius.

The mobilising domestic resources, in particular, taxation, is key to unlocking the resources required for public investment in infrastructure, growth and sustainable finance. This study aims to share the perception that the tax arrangements of states and the transnational corporations (TNCs) of developed states have a critical effect on the development prospects of the less powerful states in developing countries.

This paper locates the role of TNCs tax practice within the broader dynamics of globalisation and the pursuit of profits, to argue that the drive of TNCs for higher profits can enrich our understanding of why some TNCs engage in tax dodging. This paper used publicly available evidence to shed light on the role played by TNCs in tax dodging practices in developing countries.

The evidence shows that tax havens and offshore financial centres, shaped by globalisation, are major structures facilitating the sophisticated tax schemes of highly mobile TNCs. This paper further shows that the corrosive effect of low-tax jurisdictions (“tax havens”) continues to represent a major obstacle to a regulation of global economic relations, which is required for maintaining sustainable social and economic development of poorer states.

This paper used publicly available evidence to illuminate the role played by TNCs in tax dodging practices in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This paper, therefore, advocates a radical reform that could minimise the attendant problems created by the activities of TNCs and the enabling structures that facilitate these practices.

Tax dodging has played a major role in causing serious damage to the economic and social landscape in developing countries. This in turn, has undermined social welfare and also investment in the public services, thereby eroding the quality of life and producing a decline in average life expectancy.

This paper is a general review of literature and evidence on contemporary developmental issues.

The study aims to focus on the effectiveness of international investment agreements (IIAs) in helping or facilitating the influx of foreign direct investment (FDI) to host developing countries.

To critically examine the topic, the black letter approach and the socio-legal analysis are adopted. The study has analysed how Mauritius, being a developing country, is responding to FDI needs from various bilateral and multilateral investment treaties concluded, and the research includes the analysis of official data publicly made available by the World Trade Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, International Monetary Fund and Mauritius governmental agencies’ reports.

From the methodologies used, it was found that other than IIAs, there are various key determinants which foreign investors consider prior to injecting their capital in developing countries in terms of environmental, social and cultural factors. Also, there are some inherent loopholes mostly in terms of monitoring, in the way IIAs are concluded and are applied in practice by and amongst signatory states.

This research is amongst the first studies to conclude the link between IIAs and FDI flows in developing countries with a particular focus on Mauritius. Additionally, an overwhelming number of studies have emphasised on the efforts to boost FDI, which are inspired mostly by action plans of developed nations, but this research will analyse the policy options adopted by China, being itself a developing country, and the extent to which such recommendations are applicable in the context of Mauritius will also be considered.

The phenomenal proliferation of crowdfunding platforms raises concerns on the heightened occurrence of financial crimes since billions of funds are exchanged through these online systems frequently. Accordingly, some countries have implemented legislative responses to address these risks, although each countries’ laws have varying degrees of severity. Hence, the purpose of this study is to assess the efficiency and robustness of Mauritian laws to combat financial crimes that may arise from a crowdfunding transaction with a particular emphasis on money laundering and tax evasion.

To achieve this research objective, the black letter approach was used to analyse Mauritian rules and regulations on the researched topic and a comparative analysis was carried out against the corresponding laws on crowdfunding in some other jurisdictions, notably the UK and the USA with the view of suggesting the policy recommendations to Mauritian authorities.

It was found that there is still scope for improving the existing legal and regulatory framework on crowdfunding in Mauritius to prevent instances of money laundering and tax evasion. The paper suggests that a crowdfunding operator must be categorised as a reporting person and must carry out regular due diligence checks. There must also be more collaboration in terms of information exchanges and training sessions among the tax authority of Mauritius, crowdfunding operators, fund seekers and investors to shed light on the tax treatment of income and deductions to avoid issues of tax evasion.

At present, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is amongst the first academic writings on the efficiency of Mauritian laws in dealing with the risk of financial crimes through crowdfunding, and also, because existing literature is quite scarce on assessing the adequacy of crowdfunding rules in developing countries, this research aims at filling in the gap in literature. The study is carried out with the aim of combining a large amount of empirical, theoretical and factual information that can be of use to various stakeholders and not only to academics.

This study aims to analyze tax revenue in the presence of double tax treaties affecting social welfare of the inhabitants in the Sub-Saharan African (SSA) developing economies, whose fiscal regimes are being branded as responsible for exacerbating poverty for the inhabitants. This paper seeks to determine if double tax treaties are negatively impacting on human development of the host countries.

This study analyses 21 SSA countries from 1996 to 2016 using panel models and bootstrapped quantile regression. It uses a devised mathematical model which introduces the interaction between tax revenue and double tax treaties and measures the social welfare impact using the human development index (HDI).

The findings have broadly shown that (i) the net effect from the complementarity between tax revenue and double tax treaty (DTTs) in influencing the human development is for the most part negative (ii) the impact of tax revenue from international trade has the most positive net effect as compared to other tax revenues when interacted with the DTT and (iii) the DTT complements the tax revenue from income, profits and capital gains to progressively increase human development in the upper quartiles of HDI.

This study has examined how the presence of double tax treaties has impacted the effect of tax revenue on human development in 21 SSA countries for the period 1996–2016. A mathematical model was devised and bootstrapped quantile regression was used owing to the specificities of the sample. In accordance with recent literature on net effects, the results were interpreted.

It is evident that further research is required on whether double tax treaties are indirectly responsible for poverty on the rise in SSA countries or on the contrary, they bring FDI alongside with other positive spillovers which in the end contribute to a rise in the human development aspect of societies in developing host economies.

The HDI is an important measure used nowadays for human development as a proxy for social welfare. This research will use an HDI mathematical model devised by Sinha and Sengupta (2019) and adapt it to the context to testing econometrically whether double tax treaties have an impact on welfare or poverty reduction. The empirical results will help determine whether tax treaties are impacting the social welfare positively or negatively.

This result is the first research attempt to consider both the impact of tax revenue (which is expected to have a positive impact on social welfare of the people of the host developing countries) and the impact of double tax treaties simultaneously. It is the first empirical study focusing on the impact of tax revenue on human development in the presence of double tax treaties. Its methodology is original and adds to the current literature to benefit policymakers and academia.