Global South Faces Obstacles to Improving Tax Dispute Resolution

Developing nations’ efforts to improve their cross-border tax dispute resolution processes face ongoing hurdles and disincentives, officials and practitioners said at a Switzerland event.

Tax authorities in Africa and Latin America, with finite resources, have big incentives to invest in auditing capacity—which has a good chance of bringing in revenue—instead of dispute resolution teams, which run the risk of costing the government money in refunds.

“There is a general resistance” in Latin America to mutual agreement procedures and alternative dispute resolution, Natalia Quinones Cruz, partner at Quiñones Cruz Abogados in Colombia, said during discussion Monday at the 2025 MAP ...