Treaty abuse and domestic anti-abuse clauses: seeking a difficult substantive and procedural balance

Abstract: The development of anti-abuse measures in the context of the OECD's work and the related Model Convention on Double Taxation of Income has been a slow but progressive process, necessitated by the growing need of individual national legal systems to intercept increasingly complex and articulated taxpayer schemes. From the concept of the beneficial owner, introduced in the 1970s, a general anti-abuse clause, also known as the PPT, was finally established, in a context in which, however, many legal systems had already adopted domestic rules. Starting from an analysis of the historical evolution of the abuse of treaties, the article aims to analyse the substantive and procedural profiles of the compatibility and coexistence between the PPT clause and national anti-abuse rules, with particular attention to the Italian one.