Summary The Court of the European Free Trade Association – the EFTA equivalent of the CJEU – now also is demarcating the room for manoeuvre for the Member States in company tax matters within the scope of the EEA Treaty freedoms by reference to the arm’s-length standard. The EFTA Court does so in the same…
“Green recovery” is one of the key themes of the stimulus packages implemented worldwide in response to the Covid-19-related economic downturn. Traditionally, the answer to economic crises has focused on monetary policy and financial assistance programmes. However, as interest rates get closer to the zero lower bound, alternative stimulus policies are gaining attention in academic…
The current state of play in the negotiations for an EU Pillar 2 Directive is that all but one Member State are on board. Hence, there is one “dissenting” Member State left. As unanimity is needed within the Council to adopt an EU Directive on Pillar 2, it is currently not possible to implement Pillar…
Ivan Ozai (Osgoode Hall Law School, York University) Increasing concerns about anthropogenic climate change have motivated governments to strengthen policies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. One of the most novel policy issues under discussion in the European Union is the implementation of a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) to equalize carbon prices on EU-produced…
The very recent CJEU judgement in Berlin Chemie A. Menarini v Administraţia Fiscală pentru Contribuabili Mijlocii Bucureşti (Case C-333/20) ECLI:EU:C:2022:291, admirably examined by Giorgio Beretta last week considered the circumstances in which a subsidiary might be a VAT fixed establishment (FE) of its parent company or another affiliate. A Romanian company supplied advertising, marketing and…
A subsidiary cannot be a fixed establishment (FE) under EU VAT in (almost) any case. This is a (quite) reassuring takeaway for VAT businesses from the much-awaited decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Berlin Chemie A. Menarini (Case C-333/20). With its ruling on 7 April 2022, the CJEU (re?)affirmed…
On 10 March 2022, the Spanish Tax Administration issued a ruling concerning the VAT treatment of the transfer, through an online internet auction, of NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) that grant their purchasers certain rights of use (hereinafter: ‘the Ruling’).[1] The Spanish Tax Administration provides through this ruling a comprehensive analysis of the taxation for VAT of…
Through the judgment in Case C-714/20 issued on 12 May 2022 [1], the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) clarified that the indirect customs representative is liable, jointly and severally with the importer, only for customs duties relating to the goods and not for import VAT. This conclusion consolidates the EU jurisprudence on…
Highlights & Insights on European Taxation Please find below a selection of articles published this month (May 2022) in Highlights & Insights on European Taxation, plus one freely accessible article. Highlights & Insights on European Taxation (H&I) is a publication by Wolters Kluwer Nederland BV. The journal offers extensive information on all recent developments in European Taxation in the…
We are happy to inform you that the latest issue of the journal is now available and includes the following contributions: Suranjali Tandon, The Need for Global Minimum Tax: Assessing Pillar Two Reform In 2021, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) announced its proposal to introduce a global minimum tax. This proposal signals…
On 9 April 2022, Law 7/2022 of 8 April on waste and contaminated soil for a circular economy (“LRSC”) was finally published. This law responds to the obligation to transpose into the Spanish domestic law the measures derived from Directive 2018/851/EU (Waste Framework Directive) and Directive 2019/904 on the reduction of the impact of certain…
About a year ago, a Regional Fiscal Court in Cologne (Germany) ruled virtual renting of virtual land to be a VATable transaction.[1] In the case, a German taxpayer generated revenue by renting out virtual land. The taxpayer – or rather his avatar – received virtual currency in exchange for the virtual land. The taxpayer then…
1. Background In the article Is the Multilateral Instrument (MLI) Really Multilateral? published in the book A Multilateral Convention for Tax – From Theory to Implementation of the Wolters Kluwer Series on International Taxation, edited by Sergio André Roche and Allison Christians,[1] I analyze the nature of the MLI, a topic that has raised discussions…
Notes on the starting of MLI internalization process Background The Multilateral Convention to Implement Tax treaty Related measures to prevent BEPS (the Multilateral BEPS Convention or MLI) [i] rounded up the implementation of the treaty-based final BEPS outcomes in one single document. MLI is aimed at providing a framework that could allow amending existing bilateral…
