On 6 June 2016, the European Commission finally released its decision in the McDonald’s State Aid case. After the clarifications recently provided on the Commission’s position concerning transfer pricing cases and the arm’s length principle (see especially its decision in the Belgian Excess Profits Exemption Scheme, §§ 145–150, clarifying the Commission’s reliance on an independent…
1. The international context: OECD giant steps towards international transparency Last year OECD released its Update on Voluntary Disclosure Programs: A pathway to tax compliance, a renewed edition of the survey published in 2010; the 2015 update was aimed at providing guidance to governments wishing to offer taxpayers the chance to come forward and become…
William Byrnes with Haydon Perryman This month we turn our attention to the recently revised 2016 W-8BEN-E form which has 30 parts over eight pages that can be catalogued into four sections. The IRS released its previous substantial update of the W-8BEN-E in February 2014 and in April 2016 its most recent revisionary updated form with accompanying…
Volume 44, Issue 5 contains: ARTICLES: Roland ISMER, Sophia PIOTROWSKI, ‘A BIT Too Much: Or How Best to Resolve Tax Treaty Disputes?’ Abstract: State to state disputes under tax treaties are increasingly open for mandatory arbitration when intergovernmental negotiations do not reach a timely agreement. The present contribution seeks to understand this procedure. It also…
I want to talk about TP documentation. If what I say seems a little crazy, then at least of part of it is to be deliberately provocative. I attended a wonderful TP conference in London in March with many knowledgeable speakers, but one (shocking) question lingers in my mind. In a workshop, the workshop leader…
I recently participated in a seminar on tax & innovation in Naples, my home town where I stay often to arrange personal issues, which has a sparkling start-up community, in an increasingly conducive ecosystem. I was trying to remain engaging for non-tax folks and not sleep them out with tax technical issues, so I structured my short…
In highly dramatic fashion the French tax authorities and IT specialists raided Google’s headquarters and McDonalds. I don’t own Google stock. I’m not in favor of Google’s near monopoly on search (though it has accomplished this by offering a really great product and (free) work tools that make my life much easier). I don’t eat…
“Starbucks tax deal equals inadmissible state aid”: it was with this headline that newspapers reported on 21 October 2015 that the European Commission – instigated by Margrethe Vestager, the European Commissioner for Competition – had ruled that the Netherlands had been favouring Starbucks with an “inadmissible” tax advantage in the 20 to 30 million euro…
BEPS’ input to a fascinating discussion Taxation is the unrivaled field of law where public interest (attending state goals towards the population’s needs as a whole), in one hand, and private wealth protection, in the other, most apparently collide;[1] and the reason for that is quite simple: Public needs are financed out of private wealth…
Volume 44, Issue 4 contains: ARTICLES: Lisette van der HEL – van DIJK, Menno GRIFFIOEN, ‘Tackling VAT-Fraud in Europe: A Complicated International Puzzle’ Abstract: In Europe, the fight against VAT fraud has attracted a lot of attention since the introduction of the current VAT system. The reason for this is simple: VAT fraud leads to…
On April 12, 2016, India’s High Court at Madras delivered a landmark ruling in favor of an anti-avoidance provision (section 94A) introduced in the Indian Income Act, in 2011, to enable the Government to notify for tax purposes foreign tax jurisdictions that do not share tax and other financial information with the tax authority. From…
This month I will discuss the important topic for the anti-money laundering compliance officer, wherein the AML systems overlap with the requirement for tax compliance, and that tax compliance requirement requires tax self certification from each customer of a financial institution. I will provide insight about five topics: The Panama Papers FATCA and its related…
Volume 25 (2016) issue 2 contains: EDITORIAL: MICHAL AUJEAN, ‘Some Twenty-Seven Years after…’ Abstract: When I started writing this editorial a question quickly came to my mind: what have I been doing all these years that I devoted to taxation and more specifically to European tax policy? Then I thought it was time to say…
Massive leaks of information on offshore activity like the Panama Papers illustrate the need for an enhanced global tax cooperation with an improved and deeper interjurisdictional information sharing scheme. In fact, efforts towards reaching a global tax cooperation on obtaining and sharing interjurisdictional information is a longstanding endeavor of the international community, whose origins may…
