Abstract
A primary goal of Brexit supporters was the end of EU supervision of UK laws and the re-establishment of full UK sovereignty over all aspects of its legislative and administrative capacity. National sovereignty may, however, be compromised by international treaties in which the UK agrees to constrain the exercise of its sovereignty to gain benefits from its treaty partners and the Trade and Cooperation Agreement governing the post-Brexit relationship between the UK and EU is no exception. In particular, the Agreement appeared to impose four constraints on UK sovereignty in respect of its income tax system. A closer examination of the restrictive articles, however, suggests that three of the measures may have negligible practical impact on UK law-making powers. In contrast, the fourth measure preventing the UK from adopting concessionary tax measures that would amount to ‘state aid’ in EU terminology appears to have a direct impact on UK tax sovereignty. Its impact may be blunted, however, from seemingly incomplete or ineffective enforcement remedies. The final result may be a treaty that appears to constrain UK tax sovereignty and provides the EU with continuing authority to monitor UK tax law and administration, but which has little scope for practical impact.
Introduction
With its departure from the European Union on 31 January 2020, it appeared to many the UK regained the most fundamental of sovereignty powers, income tax sovereignty, 1 with its legislature and courts free to pursue UK tax laws and policies free of European oversight. From that day, the UK would be released from the constraints mandated by seven European income and related tax directives, 2 and UK tax law would be governed by its tax code enacted by the UK Parliament, and public international law based on the UK's bilateral tax treaties and the two multilateral agreements the UK has joined. 3 The UK was free to exercise its tax sovereignty once more.
Or was it? Incorporated into one of the two agreements the UK signed with the EU to govern relations after Brexit, the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), 4 are four measures that prima facie impact on UK tax sovereignty. (The second agreement, the Withdrawal Agreement, provided transitional rules for the UK's departure from the EU.) The first measure commits the UK to support a campaign sponsored by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to reduce international tax avoidance in the form of profit shifting by multinational corporations, the OECD's ‘base erosion and profit shifting’ (‘BEPS’) action plan. 5 A second tax provision in the TCA allows the UK to apply all its bilateral tax treaties with EU members even if measures in the treaties conflict with provisions in the TCA. 6 A third insulates from the TCA UK domestic rules needed to ensure the equitable or effective imposition or collection of income tax from the application of the TCA.
Finally, a dedicated ‘subsidy control’ chapter requires the UK to both prohibit subsidies (‘state aid’ in EU terminology) to domestic enterprises that are not available on an equal basis to EU firms and establish a new regulatory and enforcement regime to administer the prohibition on subsidy measures, including tax subsidies. 7 In contrast to the state aid measures in the treaty governing the EU (referred to in EU terminology as the EU's ‘primary legislation’), which extend to tax concessions only implicitly, 8 the TCA explicitly identifies tax concessions provided on a selective basis as a prohibited subsidy. 9 And in contrast with the other provisions in the TCA impacting on the UK's domestic income tax powers, the state aid rules provide a mechanism for the EU to intervene if the UK fails to enforce the state aid prohibition, including the prohibition against tax subsidies.
Three of the four tax measures set out in the TCA are likely to have limited, if any, impact on UK domestic income tax law. The tax standards described in the TCA are arguably merely aspirational measures and the rule giving priority to tax treaties over the TCA is largely symbolic only, with no apparent inconsistencies between the treaties, which divide taxing rights over income from cross-border investments and business activities, and the TCA. The state aid rules, in contrast, on their face appear to have substantive impact, authorising the EU to bring actions to reverse tax laws passed by the UK Parliament and rulings issued by His Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) authority. The state aid rules in the Brexit agreement raise three interesting questions. The first is why did the EU seek to dictate adherence to its state aid rules by a separate sovereign nation outside the bloc when the UK's activities would have no impact on the single EU market post-Brexit? A second question, flowing from the first, is why would the UK, after reclaiming its national sovereignty outside the EU, agree to apparent lingering constraints on its sovereignty? The third, and perhaps most important question, is whether the TCA, an international agreement, that prima facie provides for continuing EU oversight over an important aspect of the UK tax system, the taxation of corporate profits, can have a serious impact on UK law?
This article, in the following four sections, reviews each of the measures in the TCA that appear to bind UK tax rules going forward, looking beyond the ongoing and short- to medium-term tax implications of the TCA captured elsewhere, 10 and the substantive tax law aspects of the four subjects addressed in the TCA to a long-term and bigger picture analysis of the TCA provisions that appear to have an impact on UK tax law. It suggests that three of the measures incorporated in the TCA are more symbolic than substantive and ultimately will have little impact on UK tax law. The fourth measure is potentially more problematic. It is, to be sure, still early days in the post-Brexit world and if past disputes based on the European treaties (to which UK had been a member) provide any insights, it may be another decade or more before issues fully emerge and are settled or are adjudicated in courts of the two parties. Still, an examination of the TCA and ancillary UK legislation enacted to give effect to the TCA in domestic law can provide insights into the potential for opportunities for EU oversight to arise. It may be the case that the very direct measures incorporated in the TCA explicitly enabling EU interference in UK law offer more bark than bite.
International tax standards
The least ambiguous tax measures in the TCA, and the only explicit income tax measures in the agreement, commit the UK to support the OECD's BEPS initiatives and implement the minimum standards recommended by the OECD to contain BEPS. 11 A measure providing for parties to respect OECD or international standards is likely to become a feature of EU bilateral trade agreements, with comparable measures included in recent agreements with Singapore 12 and New Zealand. 13 On closer inspection, however, there is a strong case for suggesting the provisions are at best window dressing measures as the UK's adoption of OECD proposals would be based on membership in that organisation, not a treaty with the EU anticipating UK support for the organisation of which it is a founding member.
It has been suggested by some UK scholars that the motive for EU insistence on the inclusion in the Brexit treaty of aspirational standards with no accompanying enforcement regime was to mollify believers in unfounded conspiracy theories suggesting the UK government planned a ‘Singapore on Thames’ following Brexit. 14 The reality is that prior to Brexit, the UK had already incorporated measures into its income tax laws that aligned with the OECD standards. In many instances, the measures were adopted in response to EU directives setting standards for all EU members 15 or were adopted unilaterally by the UK even before the relevant EU directive was released. 16
Another UK commitment is to the OECD-drafted and sponsored ‘Multilateral Convention to Implement Tax Treaty Related Measures to Prevent Base Erosion and Profit Shifting’, 17 popularly known as the Multilateral Instrument or MLI, an international treaty that sets out some modifications and alignments of existing bilateral treaties but which is subject to enough reservations and non-signatories to reveal its nature as at best a wish list of standards its drafters would have liked to see adopted.
In short, the TCA's explicit income tax measures urging parties to have consistent tax standards are likely to have minimal impact on EU-UK tax relations. The reality is further exposed by the closing article of the taxation chapter that notes none of the measures in the chapter are enforceable as, in case of any disagreement over their adoption, they cannot be subject to the dispute resolution apparatus under the TCA. 18
Safeguarding tax treaties and protecting equitable or effective taxation
Another taxation measure in the TCA that may have little practical impact is a provision that states in the event of an inconsistency between the TCA and a double tax treaty between the UK and an EU Member State, the tax treaty will prevail: Nothing in [TCA] shall affect the rights and obligations of either the Union or its Member States and the United Kingdom, under any tax convention. In the event of any inconsistency between this Agreement and any such tax convention, the tax convention shall prevail to the extent of the inconsistency.
19
The prioritisation clause in the Brexit deal also ensures that the TCA will not interfere with or override any domestic tax procedures that might be incompatible with the TCA. Both measures appear to have little utility as no measures in the TCA have so far been identified as possibly inconsistent with the rules set out in double tax treaties entered into by Member States with the UK or with any domestic procedures in the UK. The measure is of note, however, for its apparent drafting flaw. The relevant provision of the TCA states: … nothing in [the TCA] shall be construed to prevent the adoption, maintenance or enforcement by a Party of any measure that aims at ensuring the equitable or effective imposition or collection of direct taxes.…
22
… nothing in [the EU-Japan trade] Agreement shall be construed to prevent the adoption, maintenance or enforcement by the European Union, by its Member States or by Japan of any taxation measure aimed at ensuring the equitable or effective imposition or collection of taxes.
23
(emphasis added)
Subsidy control and the TCA
One concern of EU negotiators when crafting the TCA was to extend to post-Brexit UK the European state aid rules that prohibit EU Member States from offering subsidies to enterprises located in their jurisdictions that are not available to competitors elsewhere in the EU single market. The state aid rules set out in the current EU foundation treaty, the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), are viewed by supporters of the single market as a cornerstone of that market, preventing Member States from favouring local enterprises over competitors from elsewhere in the EU. The Brexit negotiations between the EU and the UK offered the EU a unique opportunity to pry additional concessions from the UK including the extension of state aid rules to a non-member outside the context of a regional agreement. Negotiations over the state aid provisions were prolonged and intense. 24 The TCA holds, in the words of one commentator, ‘the Guinness record for the longest and most comprehensive set of provisions on subsidies control ever included in a free trade agreement’. 25
The extension of European state aid rules to tax measures
Although the intent of the prohibition against state aid in the TFEU and its earlier iterations is clearly in pursuit of a level playing field for enterprises across the EU, the language is general and open to interpretation. The measure makes no explicit mention of tax but it has long been understood to include selective concessional income tax measures and EU courts have in several cases upheld Commission decisions pronouncing concessional tax measures as selective within the meaning of a prohibited subsidy. Use of the state aid rules to combat preferential tax rules has been particularly successful in attacks on concessional local tax legislation designed to facilitate the establishment of investment hubs. 26 Examples of European Commission successes include EU court endorsements of actions against concessional tax schemes of the UK 27 and Belgium, 28 and Gibraltar accepting without an appeal to the courts a Commission decision characterising its legislation providing tax exemptions for passive income in the form of interest and royalties as prohibited state aid. 29
In the past decade, however, the measure has been used by the European Commission for a new purpose, to combat intra-Europe profit shifting arrangements by large multinational firms. The profit-shifting schemes in question take the form of transfer pricing arrangements in which a group company in a higher tax jurisdiction acquires goods or services from a related company in a lower tax jurisdiction for a price that drains profits from the higher tax jurisdiction and shifts them to the lower tax country. All EU Member States have tax measures that allow them to substitute an arm's length price for prices adopted by multinational firms for intra-group transactions where the arrangement is designed to shift profits from a higher tax jurisdiction to a lower tax jurisdiction. The anti-avoidance rules have little efficacy in the case of transactions within multinational enterprises, however. This is because it is almost impossible for tax authorities to find a comparable market transaction to use as a benchmark for proving profit shifting has taken place when faced with intra-group arrangements that would never take place outside of a multinational enterprise.
In the absence of comparable market prices for the very specialised services provided in intra-group transactions, tax authorities had no basis for attacks on the schemes using conventional profit-shifting remedies. Payments by Apple subsidiaries to a related company in Ireland, 30 Starbucks', 31 Nike's 32 and IKEA's 33 subsidiaries to a related company in the Netherlands, and Fiat, 34 Amazon 35 and Engie 36 subsidiaries to related companies in Luxembourg are examples of arrangements that local authorities were unable to stymie using arm's length transfer pricing rules.
Since Member States were unable to attack profit-shifting arrangements directly and the EU is not explicitly empowered to intervene directly in issues concerning the income tax, a tax base controlled exclusively by the Member States, the European Commission looked for a surrogate route to combat the arrangements using its power to protect the single market via the prohibition on state aid in the TFEU. Specifically, it argued that profits were only transferred in challenged cases following promises by authorities in the receiving country that the profits would receive concessional treatment when shifted to a local subsidiary. These concessions, the Commission argued, amounted to state aid as they were provided on a selective basis through private rulings to particular firms. 37
European courts hearing appeals against the European Commission directions to the relevant tax authorities to reverse their favourable rulings and reassess taxpayers as if the favourable rulings had not been issued rarely found in favour of the Commission. 38 In almost all cases in which the General Court initially upheld Commission state aid decisions, the judgments were subsequently overturned on appeal to the Court of Justice of the EU. 39 The implicit message from the courts to the European Commission is that their indirect attacks on transfer pricing and profit shifting that satisfy existing arm's length pricing rules are misplaced; if the EU is concerned about internal profit shifting, it can address the problem directly either by fixing its profit-shifting rules or moving to a broader solution such as the EU proposal for a ‘formulary apportionment’ system that allocates multinational profits without regard to intra-group transactions.
Incorporating state aid principles into the TCA as prohibited subsidies
The apparent failure of the European Commission's approach to successfully invoke state aid rules as a tool against bespoke rulings of tax authorities that facilitate intra-EU profit shifting raises the obvious question of why the EU was so anxious to include a state aid measure in the TCA. The answer probably lies in the mechanism used to incorporate the state aid rule into the TCA. Cognisant of the difficulty they faced trying to fit tax concessions under the ‘state aid’ umbrella that relied on single market principles, the EU looked to overcome the limitations of its own treaty-(TFEU)-based state aid regime by incorporating into the TCA a specific mention of tax subsidies as a form of prohibited subsidy 40 and a definition of a prohibited tax subsidy. The prohibited subsidies are described as arrangements that enable one or more enterprises to obtain a reduction in the tax liability that it or they would otherwise have borne under the normal taxation regime, and that is advantageous compared to other companies in a comparable position under the normal taxation regime. 41
Accompanying the prohibition of discriminatory tax subsidies are recovery rules that require authorities responsible for a prohibited subsidy to not only terminate the subsidy but to recover amounts received by the beneficiary from the prohibited aid. In almost all cases in which the European Commission had sought to attack transfer pricing-based tax subsidies using state aid rules, the profit shifting in question resulted from favourable rulings issued by tax authorities of Member States, not legislative subsidies, although, as noted, action has been taken against legislative subsidies as well in some cases. The distinction was explicitly incorporated into the TCA, which provides an exclusion from the ‘recovery’ rules for tax subsidies set out in UK or EU legislation that are determined to be prohibited state aid, in effect limiting the recovery rules to subsidies provided through administrative measures such as rulings issued by tax authorities. 42
In an ideal world from the EU's perspective, state aid rules including explicit references to concessional tax treatments could be extended to all nations, preventing third countries from poaching investment from EU Member States. Previously, however, the EU has lacked the leverage to demand the European-like provisions be incorporated into a trade or other treaty, though on occasion it has worked outside explicit treaties to force countries to withdraw concessions through threats of trade retaliation if they did not. 43 Brexit, however, provided a perfect opportunity for Europe to flex its muscles and insist on extending its state aid rules to a third party. Not only was the UK anxious to obtain a post-Brexit trade treaty with the EU but the UK also posed the most immediate threat to the Union as a former member that would be anxious to attract investment otherwise headed for the EU. In retrospect, the inclusion of state aid rules in the TCA should have been seen as a foregone conclusion, though the subsidy control regime was one of the most contentious items in the TCA negotiations. 44
The TCA tax subsidy enforcement mechanisms – more bark than bite?
Although the statutory basis for the prohibition against tax subsidies may be stronger in the UK under the TCA, in contrast to the seemingly problematic reliance on single market principles in the EU, the enforcement mechanism is arguably weaker. However successful the EU may have been on paper with its attempt to use the TCA as a mechanism to exert continuing oversight over the UK income tax regime, it remains to be seen whether the treaty measures have any practical implications.
The EU state aid rules have direct effect as the TFEU not only sets out the rules but also provides an enforcement mechanism by granting the European Commission power to enforce the rules and impose sanctions on Member States that fail to carry out the Commission's decisions. There is no comparable supra-national body to enforce the state aid rules in the TCA so a different operational system was needed and the TCA required the UK to adopt a new system of subsidy control to put the state aid rules into operation. 45 In response to its TCA obligation, the UK enacted a new subsidy law (the Subsidy Control Act 2022, effective 4 January 2023) and established a body to administer the law, the Subsidy Advice Unit (SAU) operating under the aegis of Competition and Markets Authority. 46
In contrast with the state aid procedure in the EU, where the European Commission has an obligation to review subsidies that might constitute state aid, 47 the UK authority would act as a vetting agency, issuing advisory reports that either affirm the legality of subsidies that it concludes will not breach the subsidy rules or rejecting them as illegal subsidies. 48 In contrast with the state aid procedure in the EU, where European Commission decisions on state aid are binding on Member States, 49 the SAU's reports are not binding on any party and authorities can disregard the findings if they choose. 50 Any person whose interest could be affected by the subsidy decision (including the UK's Secretary of State and, implicitly, the European enterprises) 51 can bring the findings of the SAU's report to the Competition Appeal Tribunal. 52 The Tribunal has the powers to dismiss the appeal or accept and issue orders to prohibit or suspend the subsidy. 53 The Tribunal can also issue orders for recovery of the subsidy. 54 The Tribunal's decision, if contested, will go through the UK court system. 55
The operational and enforcement rules in the Subsidy Control Act, in particular the vetting role of the SAU, make it clear that the primary concern of the Act and the TCA that gave rise to it is direct subsidies, not tax concessions. Indeed, there is no obvious remedy path in the event of an administrative-based tax concession such as a concessional ruling or extra-statutory concession created by HMRC, the tax administration body. While the TCA prohibits state aid in the form of tax concessions, if HMRC were to issue concessional rulings with effects comparable to those issued by tax authorities in Ireland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg in cases pursued by the EU, there is no apparent process for the ruling to be reviewed by the SAU under the Subsidy Control Act. If the European Commission wished to object to the ruling, it would have to invoke remedies available under the TCA and not the Subsidy Control Act.
The starting point for the European Commission to counter an impugned tax subsidy would be a request for information from consultation with UK authorities. 56 UK authorities would be required to provide the requested information within 30 days 57 but apparently there are no sanctions available if they fail to do so. If the consultations fail and the European Commission concludes a tax ruling amounts to an illegal subsidy that poses a serious risk to trade or investment, it may take unilateral remedial measures 60 days after the consultation request was delivered to UK authorities, 58 notifying the UK 15 days before taking the unilateral measure. 59 This option is only available if the value of the subsidy (the tax savings) is greater than approximately GBP 350,000 over any three fiscal year period. 60
The TCA does not provide guidance on what constitutes acceptable remedial measures under this remedy, other than to state they should be ‘appropriate’ 61 and it is not clear what the EU can do if the UK simply ignores the process. The loss to the EU is the tax revenue of a Member State lost to transfer pricing or potential profits missed by the competitors in the single market of the enterprise that has shifted profits. However, the party that has suffered the loss, the Member State housing an enterprise whose profits have been shifted out of the jurisdiction, has in effect accepted the loss by not challenging the transfer pricing arrangement. If the impugned ruling had been issued by an EU Member State, the distortion to investment and business practices caused by concessional rulings would be inconsistent with the single market and vulnerable to action by the European Commission. The remedy in this case would be an order by the Commission that the favourable ruling be rescinded and tax imposed by the tax authority that issued the ruling. The TCA, however, provides for an appropriate remedial response by the ‘victim’ of the subsidy, a formula of no practical value if the victim is a Member State that has not contested the transfer of profits.
If, notwithstanding these challenges, the EU has taken some sort of remedial action the UK can commence an arbitration process with a request for the establishment of arbitrational tribunal 62 or seek relief under the World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute resolution processes. 63 If the UK were to decide to trigger the TCA arbitration process, the arbitrational tribunal would have up to 30 days to reach a decision, 64 and should it find the remedial measure excessive, disproportionate or inconsistent with the subsidy control rules under TCA, it could order a specific level of suspension of the remedial measure, notified to the concerned party in 30 days. The recipient of the notice would be bound to comply in 15 days. 65 In theory, if the EU were to ignore an arbitral direction to reverse its remedial action, the UK could suspend some of its obligations under the treaty, 66 although escalation of this sort is of course unlikely and this also assumes the EU could move past the initial threshold challenge of showing it (as opposed to a Member State) has suffered from the UK concession.
In short, the TCA has incorporated subsidy rules intended to mimic the prohibitions against state aid found in the European foundation treaty and gone one step beyond the European treaty rules by explicitly specifying concessional tax treatment as a form of prohibited subsidy. The UK has responded with domestic legislation prohibiting state aid and the establishment of a body to identify instances of state aid. It has also provided an existing tribunal with authority to rule on state aid complaints. The system, however, has been designed with positive subsidies in mind and appears impotent in the face of tax subsidies resulting from administrative decisions, the target of past European Commission actions. As a result, if the Commission were to object to tax concessions provided by way of ruling by HMRC, it would have to turn to the TCA for remedies. The TCA subsidy rules, however, are primarily geared to positive subsidies and appear to have no clear remedial paths to challenge and rectify tax subsidies provided by way of favourable administrative rulings. There is, moreover, the jurisdictional hurdle noted earlier caused by the fact that an EU Member State may have suffered a tax loss as a result of profit shifting combined with a concessional tax ruling but only the EU is authorised to adopt a remedial measure under the TCA.
A further challenge facing the European Commission is the binding nature of UK tax rulings. While the UK does not have a full binding private rulings system comparable to that in some other jurisdictions, 67 it does offer advance pricing rulings and non-statutory advance clearances that are treated as binding on HMRC on the basis of legitimate expectations doctrines. 68 If, despite the possible difficulties noted, the European Commission took actions that resulted in a decision by authorities to direct HMRC to reverse a ruling, it may prove challenging for HMRC to show the taxpayer did not have a legitimate expectation that the ruling it received and acted upon would be honoured by the administrative agency.
Assessing the impact
The UK government's official ‘Summary’ of the TCA states that the agreement contains ‘no provisions constraining our domestic tax regime or tax rates’. 69 The assertion is arguably accurate in respect of the provisions expressing the parties’ intention to follow OECD and international standards, which include the anti-tax avoidance measures that are already part of the UK's tax system. 70 It is also seemingly accurate in respect of the reconciliation rule that gives priority to tax treaties in the event of inconsistency with the trade treaty. The TCA's variation from traditional trade treaties, assigning responsibility for identifying and addressing apparent inconsistencies jointly to tax and trade competent authorities rather than only tax authorities is of interest but again of no noticeable consequence in terms of constraints on the domestic tax regime or tax rates. And lastly, the assertion is clearly accurate in terms of the measure giving primacy to the UK's domestic income tax rules on designated cross-border transactions.
The claim is, however, prima facie difficult to reconcile with the state aid subsidy provisions of the TCA, measures that have caused the UK to establish a new subsidy control regime that it almost certainly would not have otherwise adopted to prevent the UK from providing subsidies prohibited under the TCA. While it remains to be seen how effective the measures ultimately prove to be, the intent clearly is to impose a restriction on UK domestic income tax powers.
Viewed in a broader historical context, the TCA constraints on UK tax sovereignty are not radical. The UK has been a member of the WTO since its inception in 1995 and agreed as a member to forgo substantial jurisdiction over its domestic tariff regime in return for perceived benefits of a global agreement. Separately, the UK has entered into an extended network of more than 150 international double tax agreements 71 in which it agreed to give up substantial sovereign taxing rights, accepting caps on tax rates on UK-source dividends, interest and royalties derived by non-residents, and to forgo entirely its jurisdiction under domestic law to impose income tax on other types of income, most notably business income derived in the UK by non-residents unless the income is derived through a relatively narrowly defined ‘permanent establishment’. It also agreed to voluntarily abandon taxing rights over capital gains derived by non-residents from UK sources apart from gains on direct and some indirect sales of immovable property.
Voluntarily abandoning its taxing rights in so many double tax agreements is not regarded by the UK government as a retreat from national tax sovereignty. Rather, it is seen as an exercise in sovereignty – using its power to enter into international treaties to gain benefits including access to shared information to avoid revenue leakages, assistance in its efforts to assess its residents, providing avenues to UK residents to resolve international tax disputes, and more, in return to agreed reductions in its taxing powers over residents of its treaty partners. The TCA is arguably not dissimilar. In return for perceived trade advantages and other benefits seen as important to its national sovereignty, the UK agreed to abide by the EU's state aid rules, albeit under a different label and scheme.
While similar income tax rules are not included in the UK's other international trade agreements, the trade agreement with the EU, the UK's largest trading partner, was clearly sufficiently important to warrant agreement by the UK to the additional tax terms insisted upon by its treaty partner. From the perspective of the EU, the UK's need for a trade agreement offered unparalleled negotiation leverage and a unique opportunity to extend EU controls over its members’ direct tax system to a non-Member State, ensuring the UK would continue to be bound by some of the EU restrictions post-Brexit. It was an opportunity readily exploited by the European Union.
The inclusion of income tax measures into a trade treaty, and one that on its face imposes a significant restriction on UK tax sovereignty, appears to be inconsistent with the primary aim of the UK's exit from the EU, regaining full national sovereignty over its legislative processes. The constraint may not be as significant as first appears, however, given the convoluted and perhaps ultimately ineffective enforcement mechanism that applies to the constraint. The restrictive measure in particular may be tested in the future as the UK seeks to attract new investment and assist UK-based enterprises.
Footnotes
Conflict of interest
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
