cross-border leasing has been widely used in some european countries, to arbitrage the difference in the tax laws of different jurisdictions, usually between a european country and the united states. typically, this rests on the fact that, for tax purposes, some jurisdictions assign ownership and the attendant depreciation allowances to the entity that has legal title to an asset, while others (like the u.s.) assign it to the entity that has the most indicia of tax ownership (legal title being only one of several factors taken into account). in these cases, with sufficiently long leases (often 99 years), an asset can end up with two effective owners, one in each jurisdiction; this is often referred to as a double-dip lease.