Cross-border tax terms — A

Each entry answers two questions — what the term picks out, and what changes once it applies. Neither answer needs a number, and a number in a definition tends to outlive its accuracy.

A surprising share of cross-border trouble is translation rather than arithmetic. The same payment is employment income on one side and something else on the other, and nobody notices until two authorities have both assessed it. That is why each entry ends by pointing at work rather than at more reading: the pages where the term determines an amount or a deadline.

Knowing the term is the first half. Knowing whether it applies to your year, and what evidence proves it, is the half that changes the outcome. Every page here carries the name of the person who reviewed it and the date they did.

• Arbitration clause — A treaty provision allowing an unresolved mutual agreement case to be referred to binding arbitration.
• Annual information statement — India's compiled record of what banks, registrars and brokers reported about a taxpayer.
• Arm's length principle — The standard that a controlled transaction should be priced as it would have been between independent enterprises in comparable circumstances.
• Advance pricing arrangement — An agreement with one or both tax authorities fixing the transfer-pricing method for future years, and in some countries for past ones by rollback.
• Adjusted cost base — The tax cost of property, from which a gain or loss is computed.
• Apportionment — The division of a multi-state or multi-province tax base between jurisdictions by formula, usually on sales, payroll and property.
• Alter ego trust — A trust used to defer the death-year deemed disposition and avoid probate, which can be the wrong structure entirely where a US person is involved.
• Advance ruling — A binding determination of the tax treatment of a proposed transaction, obtained before the transaction is carried out.
• Angel tax — The Indian rule that can treat share premium above fair value as income of the issuing company, resolved by valuation evidence at the time of issue.
• Advance tax — India's in-year collection of tax by instalments, with interest for deferment and shortfall.
• Airdrop — Tokens received without consideration, raising the same timing question as a staking reward: when income arises and at what value.
• Authorised representative — A person authorised with a tax authority to see assessments and slips and to act for the taxpayer — usually where the discrepancies are found.
• Arrival valuation — Documentation of what property was worth on the day residence began, which sets the cost base and cannot be recreated years later.

What the A entries have in common

13 terms begin with A. The term below is defined in full on its own page, alongside the filings it governs and the fee for dealing with them. Three to start with: Arbitration clause, Annual information statement and Arm's length principle.

Nearby letters

0-9 — 1 term · B — 10 terms. The full A–Z lists all 297 terms in one place.

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