2022-09-23
The IRS publishes PDF files of the income tax treaties that the U.S. has entered into with other countries. I don’t usually use the IRS versions of the treaties. I have previously noted inaccuracies in them. In addition, the IRS versions do not incorporate the protocols into the main text of the treaty.
However, a client recently had a question about the Sweden-U.S. Income Tax Treaty and had emailed me a copy of the IRS version. I was looking at this version of the treaty and trying to read Article 19, paragraph 4. I could not find the verb in the sentence. I have trouble understanding sentences when they don’t have verbs in them.
I looked at another version of the treaty as provided by a tax research service, and realized that there were actually 18 words missing from Article 19, paragraph 4.
I decided to compare the entire treaty between IRS version and this other version. I noted at least 8 blatant errors in the IRS version of the treaty. Below is an image which highlights the errors. Click here for a PDF file showing the errors.
