After the initial relief that followed upon reaching a Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom on Christmas Eve, we slowly see how this treaty is going to affect the tax domain. In this blog I will briefly focus on the area of fiscal state aid, i.e. the regulation of…
With a judgment rendered on 27 November 2020 (case no. 2C_835/2017), the Swiss Federal Supreme Court (“FSC”) confirmed a decision by the Federal Administrative Court (“FAC”) of 24 August 2017 (decision no. A-1462/2016) concerning an individual tax residence matter that arose in the context of certain dividend withholding tax (WHT) refund requests, which had been…
The newly concluded Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the EU and UK has limited provisions concerning taxation, but interesting provisions relevant to interpretation of treaties including good faith. The Agreement does not seek to replicate many of the rights which UK citizens and businesses had under EU law. There is no general non-discrimination provision. Double…
When the UK introduced its diverted profits tax, I was telephoned by a lawyer at the US Treasury. He wanted to know whether the “just and reasonable” apportionment of profits, in certain circumstances where DPT applied, was a new development? What did it mean? I was reminded of that discussion this week as a result…
Case law on thepurpose of transactions is starting to develop around the world. Is there a common pattern? Whether a financing structure was a “tax avoidance arrangement” under now repealed general anti-avoidance provisions of the New Zealand Income Tax Act 2004 was examined last month by the New Zealand Court of Appeal in Commissioner of…
Following the Supreme Court decision in Fowler v HMRC [2020] UKSC 22, the UK First-tier Tribunal has considered another case where classification of a source of income for tax treaty purposes was in issue. This time the question was classification as business profit or income from immovable property in the Canada-UK double tax treaty. In…
In last month’s blog I promised to address the treaty aspects of Davies and Others v HMRC [2020] UKUT 67 (TCC). The case concerned UK resident individuals who each took out a life insurance policy with a Bermuda insurer under which their entitlements were linked to a Mauritian company that developed land in the UK….
We have all become familiar with the expression in the PPT set out in article 7(1) of the MLI and article 29(9) of the 2017 OECD Model where “obtaining that benefit was one of the principal purposes of any arrangement or transaction”. Discerning which is a principal purpose is one of the main challenges in…
