Richard Reinhold (Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP) has published Some Things that Multilateral Tax Treaties Might Usefully Do, 57 Tax Law. 661 (2004). Here is part of the Introduction:

The basic pattern of international taxation has been in place for upwards of 80 years at this point. Although this regime served reasonably well for many years, addressing in more or less appropriate fashion the transaction formats that were current during that period, cracks have appeared in the foundation and seem to be widening. The causes are easily identified: increased mobility of capital (and people), the continuous de-construction and re-assembly of transaction forms, and the evolution of commerce from transactions in tangible goods to services and electronic-based (or at least electronically-acquired) products. All have contributed to increasing dissonance in international tax results.

This paper does not attempt any sort of comprehensive re-thinking of the existing rules for taxing international transactions. Rather, its object is the much more modest one of suggesting consideration of a mechanism — a multilateral tax treaty, in certain discrete settings — that might address some difficult international tax problems, which have come to the fore. Two such contexts will be considered here: (i) multi-national service partnerships and (ii) international electronic commerce (“e-commerce”) transactions. The two topics seem to have nothing to do with each other, but each presents a potentially interesting test case for a single-subject multilateral tax treaty. It may be the case that multilateral tax treaties could be useful in other settings, and perhaps the successful implementation of one or more limited treaties could create a favorable climate for more multilateral tax agreements.