It has been over a year since the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released its final report on base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS). The BEPS Project is a global tax initiative designed to increase transparency and level the tax playing field among participating countries.

Essentially, BEPS represents the OECD's tax policy recommendations, which it calls "actions," and which have been endorsed by the G-20 finance ministers. If implemented by tax jurisdictions around the world, these actions would ensure that corporate income is taxed in the jurisdiction in which it is incurred, and could eliminate corporate use of tax havens.

Last fall, the OECD finalized 15 actions for combating the loss of tax revenue due to gaps in tax policy and enforcement. (See Figure 1, below.) The actions are not binding or enforceable at a global level; rather, they represent a set of principles that tax authorities around the world can refer to in crafting their own local BEPS-compliant tax policies and rules.