Volume 44 (2016) Issue 1 contains: EDITORIAL Ana Paulo DOURADO, ‘May You Live In Interesting Times’ Abstract: In the current global tax good governance context, exchange of information is one condition for the BEPS initiative to be successful. Action 5 (Counter Harmful Tax Practices More Effectively, Taking into Account Transparency and Substance) foresees mandatory spontaneous…
In his last State of the Union speech on January 13, 2016 Obama put it quite clear: “The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. It’s not even close.” With this statement Obama obviously addressed the position of the United States in terms of military capacity and its position in…
Howdy from Prof. Haydon Perryman and I of Texas A&M University. This month we undertake a 2015 review of FATCA’s GIIN registrations relative to 2014. We also include a chart at the end of this post comparing 2014 and 2015 by IGA type, as well as a monthly breakdown of GIIN registrations since list publication began in…
“Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.” Benjamin Franklin Organisations generally, when starting a business in any country, concentrate on getting a licence to operate, in setting up an office, employing the correct staff and doing business. Otherwise, why else would an organisation…
A Latin American Perspective Until very recently tax risk management concepts were quite stable. The over-riding principle in this area was and still is that tax risk is best managed by the prevention of all unnecessary disputes; but as simple as this principle appear to be, taken to an extreme, avoidance of all potential tax…
The Spanish National Court has recently ruled (case no. 182/2012) that a Spanish affiliate of Dell that sold Dell computers in Spain under a commissionaire agreement with Dell Ireland constituted a permanent establishment of the Irish group sales company. The decision is in line with earlier Spanish Supreme Court Decisions in Roche Vitamins Europe SA…
Since the press releases confirming negative State Aid decisions in the Starbucks and Fiat tax ruling cases late October, the EU tax law community is still eagerly awaiting the publication of the actual decisions (to be published here and here). Most likely, the decisions will hinge on the concrete transfer pricing calculations made (or accepted)…
Starbucks Manufacturing BV (SMBV), based in the Netherlands, is the only coffee roasting company in the Starbucks group in Europe. It sells and distributes roasted coffee and coffee-related products (e.g. cups, packaged food, pastries) to Starbucks outlets in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Read my previous comments on this case post here. The EU…
Taxation is undoubtedly the unrivaled field where public interest needs and individual rights most evidently confront to each other. Until the second part of the last decade, the principle of reserve or legality which might be traced back to the Magna Carta, and was modernly adopted almost unanimously by western constitutionalism, set forth a clear…
The raison d’être of corporate taxation relates to the aim of achieving an impartial treatment of different legal forms in order to safeguard a level playing field for conducting business. In the EU this aim must be contemplated in conjunction with the objective of establishing an internal market free of fiscal barriers. The present post…
This month, Haydon Perryman and I review the change over the past year, and the immediate previous three months, for FATCA financial institution registrations. The November 1, 2015 GIIN list contains 177,147 registrations from 226 countries and jurisdictions. Of these November 2015 registrations 84 percent were from Model 1 IGAs that had been either signed or…
Written by Associate Professor, PhD, Michael Tell, Department of Law, Copenhagen Business School and Technical Advisor, CORIT Advisory. Darwin’s theory of evolution states that complex creatures evolve from more simplistic ancestors, while natural selection ensures that only the fittest survive and the others become evolutionary “dead-ends”. The aim of this blog contribution is to address…
The longstanding view on application of the arm’s length principle is that it is generally based on a comparison of the conditions in a controlled transaction with the conditions in transactions between independent enterprises. A transaction, for this purpose, almost always involves a contract. This is because a contract, whether made in writing, orally or…
Introduction It has been a few weeks now since the Commission has made public its decisions in the FIAT and Starbucks cases. I understand that the Commission, the countries involved and the taxpayers are now going through the decisions themselves, agreeing on what information is too confidential to be published, before the actual – blacked…
