The European Court of Justice’s (ECJ) decision to disallow the Belgian tax authorities’ attempt to turn exempt capital gains into taxable profits in the Gimle case gives taxpayers certainty on the accounting treatment of acquisitions and removes the need to undertake contrived intra-group transactions to obtain an exemption.
The Supreme Court of Canada has denied Envision Credit Union’s (Envision) strategy for avoiding tax upon amalgamation in a ruling which could have broader implications for the tax treatment of mergers in Canada.
Tax authorities need to follow information exchange protocol more carefully or risk having requests blocked, after the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) sought financial details about two Cayman Islands firms but was blocked by the UK territory’s Grand Court.
Clothing retailer Grattan’s UK First-tier Tax Tribunal (FTT) defeat showed that fiscal neutrality is an aid to interpreting VAT directives, not a rule of substantive law. However, that does not mean taxpayers cannot still win with arguments based on the principle.
Item 14 of the OECD's Action Plan on base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) aims to devise solutions to obstacles preventing countries from resolving cross-border disputes under the mutual agreement procedure (MAP). Joe Dalton investigates whether introducing mediation techniques to the MAP process is a viable solution.
