US debt-equity special focus

International Tax Review is part of Legal Benchmarking Limited, 1-2 Paris Garden, London, SE1 8ND

Copyright © Legal Benchmarking Limited and its affiliated companies 2026

Accessibility | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Modern Slavery Statement

US debt-equity special focus

us-debt-equity-puff.gif

US taxpayers who seek to exploit the differences in the tax treatment of debt and equity will need to prepare for more aggressive enforcement by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The decisions in three recent court cases, all featured in this International Tax Review special focus, suggest how companies could deal with this approach from the tax authorities.

Download the special report as a PDF

The IRS's fight against hybrid financing instruments is an issue US tax directors cannot afford to ignore.

Tax-minimising opportunities arise for multinationals when financing cross-border transactions because treatment of hybrid debt-equity instruments across jurisdictions is not uniform. And the US Tax Court has shown in recent rulings that tax planning, to benefit from such opportunities, is perfectly acceptable.

But the IRS does not like it and is increasingly challenging multinationals on the issue. This report analyses the Hewlett Packard, Scottish Power and PepsiCo debt-equity cases, pulling out the practical lessons for taxpayers considering putting debt-equity structures in place.

It also examines how to defend a debt-equity position against an IRS challenge, with exclusive insight from the taxpayer and adviser team involved in guiding Scottish Power to its hard-fought Tax Court victory over the IRS.

Join your peers by engaging in the debate on LinkedIn and Twitter. The ITR Twitter handle is @Intltaxreview and you can share your views using #ITRdisputes

Tweet this         #ITRdisputes         LinkedIn group

Contents

us-debt-equity1-court.jpg

How to deal with debt-equity in the US

us-debt-equity2-pepsi.jpg

Has PepsiCo's US Tax Court win revealed "super factor" in deciding debt vs equity cases?

us-debt-equity3-scottishpower.jpg

How Scottish Power's US Tax Court victory could hamper IRS

us-debt-equity4-hp.jpg

Hewlett-Packard's court defeat is bad news for US banks

Download this special report as a PDF


Further reading on ITRPremium's Tax Disputes section

more across site & shared bottom lb ros

More from across our site

The new managing director of R&D tax relief consultancy ForrestBrown tells ITR about his priorities for the business, where he’s focusing his time and what makes tax cool
PwC Australia’s response to its tax leaks scandal could give KPMG a useful case study, but so far there’s little sign of positive lessons learned
Tom Goldstein’s attempt to overturn his tax conviction was shot down; in other news, Deloitte promoted several tax partners in Italy
The tax advisory firm becomes the latest member of the Andersen Global network, which has more than 50,000 professionals worldwide
A revised Chapter VII signals a move away from mechanical TP approaches, stressing transaction understanding, functional analysis and context-driven documentation requirements
HMRC’s growing focus on evidencing tax decisions is shifting attention from technical accuracy to governance, requiring businesses to demonstrate how positions were reached and documented
Australia’s Department of Finance will also commission an independent review of KPMG’s governance, culture, ethics and integrity frameworks, it has revealed
In the second instalment of this two-part series, Jayne Stokes takes a practical approach to navigating the capital v revenue question for UK R&D claims for software development, and shares pointers for businesses
ITR's latest podcast considers how transformational the buyout could be in Ryan's quest for global advisory reach and analyses a recent boom in demand for private client advisory services
The event comes at an important moment for professionals dealing with practical realities related to this practice area
Gift this article