In issue 2/2026 of the journal ‘Fiscalità & Commercio Internazionale’, Giovanni Rolle and Matteo Caretti examined the new developments regarding permanent establishments arising from home-based work, introduced by the recent amendments to the Commentary on the OECD Model Convention.
The update to the Commentary comes at a time when remote working, including across borders, has become the norm, rendering the OECD’s previous guidelines, dating from 2017, inadequate.
Among the main changes, it is worth noting the replacement of the so-called ‘availability test’ with the new ‘commercial reason’ criterion, according to which a permanent establishment should not be deemed to exist where it is entirely irrelevant to the enterprise whether the worker is located in one country rather than another.