Abstract:

OECD’s BEPS project is one of the major steps toward a new era in international taxation. This 15-step project revealed several deep issues in existing international taxation system. While OECD provides possible solutions and recommendations to fight these issues, it is highly unlikely to achieve sustainable results without changing existing bilateral tax treaties. Since changing these treaties would be a burden globally, the last action plan of BEPS project introduces a multilateral convention, which will co-exist with the existing tax treaties and will host all the new developments arose from the project. Multilateral Instrument (MLI) is a comprehensive document which includes necessary provisions to eliminate problems in international tax field. While some articles of MLI can not be reserved, some others provide options to jurisdictions to choose from or can be opted-out entirely. To understand how MLI will affect both international and domestic tax law of a jurisdiction, it is necessary to investigate said jurisdiction’s MLI position which includes preliminary list, reservations and notifications provided by this jurisdiction. Within this study firstly the scope and the structure of MLI will be explained. As the second part, this study aims to investigate Turkey’s reservations and the reasoning behind them.

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