Monumental progress was recently made, in the form of 4 treaty protocols being approved; Luxembourg, Switzerland, Japan and Spain. This will hopefully start a natural progression towards prompt treaty approvals/ratifications.
Additional Section 965, transition tax, FAQ’s were issued. As you may recall, there was an infamous FAQ issued 13 April, 2018, whereby all overpayments from 2017 were deemed to be credited in their entirety to the 8 years, if elected, of transition tax liability. This important issue is still being contested, and am hopeful that HR 2985 calling for its proper reversal (i.e. IRS was wrong) will attract additional cosponsors and be an integral component of a tax technical corrections package that will be passed this year.
The 2019 United Nations (UN) tax treaty negotiation manual, attached for reference, was updated to reflect changes in the 2017 UN Model Treaty to include changes that resulted from the OECD’s base erosion and profit-shifting project.
Transfer pricing: IRS officials noted that completing the advance pricing and mutual agreement program’s (APMA’s) functional cost diagnostic model (FCDM) is a detailed process and taxpayers may want to submit the model form only in complex cases.
EY’s Global Tax Alert contains additional details, provided as reference.
Click to access manual-bilateral-tax-treaties-update-2019.pdf
Strategizing Multinational Tax Risks 
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