AmCham presented the paper to Ms. Marjorie Chorlins, vice president for European Affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, to which AmCham Croatia is an affiliate organization. AmCham also requested support in advocating for the launch of a negotiating procedure for the conclusion of a double taxation treaty between Croatia and the US.

Double taxation treaties are international contracts entered into by states with the principal purpose to reduce or eliminate double taxation of income earned by residents of each country from sources within the other country. Tax treaties are intended to prevent avoidance or evasion of taxes but their actual influence exceeds this purpose: they also help promote and foster closer economic cooperation by helping to eliminate possible barriers to trade and investment caused by overlapping taxing jurisdictions.

Despite a number of attempts to date to initiate the negotiating process for signing a tax treaty with the US coming from Croatia, no such treaty is currently in place.

Nonexistence of such a treaty, among other things, reduces transparency in doing business, puts a significant tax and administrative burden on companies from Croatia wanting to do business in the US and vice-versa and hinders and thus decreases the scope of knowledge transfer among the two countries. In addition, the absence of a treaty puts Croatia directly at a disadvantage in comparison to other European union member states, which have such treaties in place.

Therefore, with its position paper AmCham calls for opening of the negotiation procedure for putting a double taxation treaty between Croatia and the US in place.