he OECD issued their revised proposals concerning the meaning of ‘beneficial owner’ for the purposes of the OECD Model Tax Convention on 19 October 2012. Key proposals still contain a degree of uncertainty around what it means to be a beneficial owner through its introduction of a ‘related’/‘unrelated’ concept – and it is this that would-be treaty claimants may struggle with. This guidance can perhaps be contrasted with the more robust ratio set out in the recent Canadian tax case, Velcro Canada Inc v The Queen.
