Andrew Mitchel LLC

International Tax Blog - New and Interesting International Tax Issues


How inaccurate is the IRS Version of the Sweden Treaty (pretty inaccurate)

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.

Sweden_images1

Tags: 894 Treaties