Value added tax.
Much changed in the world of taxation the last couple of years. The OECD started and finished the BEPS (Base Erosion and Profit shifting) project. The objective of BEPS was to develop rules that would prohibit multinational enterprises to implement tax avoiding structures or tax evasive set-ups. The EU investigated the tax structures of Apple,…
Much has been written – and probably even more has been said – about the different consequences of the Brexit vote. This is hardly a surprise: the decision is a first in the history of the European Union, and despite the existence of the nowadays (in?) famous Article 50, one still has trouble understanding how…
“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” – Brothers Grimm, “Snow White” Where it all started Tax evolved like many things in the world we experience today. Taxes were already levied during the various reins of the Egyptian Pharaohs. The earliest taxes in Rome were customs duties on imports and exports…
Introduction While tax legislation is subject to continuous changes, tax treaties are an interesting tool whereby Contracting States offer investors some degree of legal certainty, especially where there is a recognition that internal law should not override tax treaties’ provisions. Article 2(4) of OECD-MA can be seen as a provision intended to assure the continuity…
On June 24 the British people voted in favour of the UK leaving the EU. The vote itself does not automatically imply the withdrawal from the EU: indeed, such withdrawal shall take place pursuant to Article 50 of the EU Treaty, which requires in the first place the notification of the intention to leave the…
When UK voters went to the polls on 23 June 2016 and voted by a slim majority to leave the European Union, few of them had in mind the impact on taxation. Future generations are unlikely to view it kindly. Looked at from the present the dominating features are uncertainty and disruption of settled tax…
In order to close this cycle of dissertations about non-discrimination in International Tax Law, we will finish by talking about the specific case of the Andean Countries. Decision 578 of the Andean Community – which is aimed at avoiding the double taxation of income and wealth taxes for taxpayers in Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador…
The establishment of a link between the financial interests of the Union and the general budget of the Union is the reason why the domestic penalties made applicable in matters of VAT fraud are covered by Union law. On 8 September 2015 the Court of Justice of the EU (“CJEU”) issued its ruling in Taricco,…
Importance of legal certainty in cross-border scenarios In the context of the EU VAT system, the principle of legal certainty requires that Community legislation must be certain and its application foreseeable by those subject to it. In practice, however, national VAT laws often deviate from the EU VAT Directive due to differences in local interpretation…
