Taxes at source which are typically withheld by the payor in a transaction and transferred to tax authorities on behalf of the payee of the same transaction.
Recently, national courts of several EU member States (notably France[1], Italy[2], the Netherlands[3] and Spain[4]) referred to the landmark judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) in the so-called “Danish cases”.[5] On 20 April 2020, the Swiss Supreme Court gave its own interpretation of these judgments[6] in an outbound dividend case…
In its judgment of January 21, 2020 (Santander case, available here), the European Court of Justice (ECJ) not only prevented the Spanish Central Tax Tribunal (Tribunal Económico-Administrativo Central – TEAC) from requesting a preliminary ruling due to its lack of juridical independence (para. 77), but it also recalled its obligation to ensure that EU law…
With a judgment rendered on 16 December 2019 (case no. 2C_209/2017), the Swiss Federal Supreme Court (“FSC”) rejected several reclaims of Swiss dividend withholding taxes made by a Luxembourg resident financial institution (“Lux Bank”) and thereby denied the claimant the benefits of the double taxation treaty between Switzerland and Luxembourg on income and capital taxes…
Since 2013 the OECD has worked on forging a grand coalition (now 136 countries) it calls the “Inclusive Framework” around adopting the outcomes of the OECD’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project of 15 reports. In 2005, ten years before the BEPS reports, the OECD published E-commerce: Transfer Pricing and Business Profits Taxation to…
Tax Administration Announces New Control Project The Finnish Tax Administration has announced that it will be tackling arrangements to avoid withholding tax on dividends. According to the Tax Administration, nominee-registered shares are subject to withholding tax avoidance also in Finland. The new control project investigates the extent of the phenomenon and plans to implement comprehensive…
Equality is one of the core values of modern democratic societies. It is no accident that equality featured in opening preamble to the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the first article of both the French Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789 and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights…
The judgments of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on the withholding tax exemption provided by the Interest and Royalties Directive (available here – the ‘IRD judgment’) and the Parent-Subsidiary Directive (available here – ‘the PSD judgment’) on February 26, 2019 (‘the Danish cases’) have raised many issues to discuss. As some authors have pointed…
Taxation of the digital economy has become a war in the post-BEPS world. As with any war, there are more or less clear rivals and there will be of course winners and losers. It goes without saying that there are also “casualties” in this conflict, i.e. those policy options initially included in the drafts published…
Almost every foreign client I have advised has at some stage told me how complex the Indian Income Tax Act is. And those who follow Indian tax jurisprudence closely know that judicial decisions, in many cases, are doubly complex. Recently, India’s Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT), New Delhi was asked to decide if the tax…
Being familiar with the Spanish tax environment, readers will know that Spain does not withhold taxes on interest paid to EU residents. This domestic exemption has been in force for several decades, long before the EU Interest and Royalties Directive. The domestic exemption has the beauty of simplicity: it applies to all EU-resident lenders, without…
Taxation of the digital economy featured in discussion on the implementation of the OECD/G20 BEPS action items at the annual conference of the Canadian Tax Foundation in Toronto on 21 November 2017. Several speakers note that no generally accepted solution had been found to address the impact of the digitalisation of the global economy on…
I was recently asked to analyze the often quoted figure of $150 billion lost by the U.S. Treasury to foreign non-tax compliance by U.S. taxpayers. My transcribed remarks are below. Also, see William Byrnes’ Guide to FATCA & CRS Compliance (Matthew Bender 5th ed., 2017) at pp. 30, 33-34, 50, 59, 109-112, and 119-122. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2926119 How…
Introduction and EU law applicable On 8 March 2017 the Court of Justice of the European Union (hereafter “CJ”) delivered its decision in the Case C-448/15, Wereldhave, dealing with the interpretation of the “subject to tax” requirement provided for the application of the Parent-Subsidiary Directive (both Directive 90/435/EEC and Directive 2011/96/EU). Under article 1(1) of Directive…
The Italian Supreme Court issued a landmark case (n. 27113 December 2016) setting out the principles to be taken into account when analyzing whether a company can be deemed the “beneficial owner” for the purpose of being entitled to double tax treaty benefits. In particular, the Italian Supreme Court examined whether a company resident for…
