Features

Tommaso Di Tanno, professor and founder of Di Tanno e Associati, explains how the EU and OECD efforts to tax the digital economy are progressing.

Italy’s Supreme Court has issued a controversial decision on the requirements necessary to benefit from withholding tax (WHT) exemptions on profits distributed to companies resident in other EU member states. Chiomenti’s Paolo Giacometti and Raul-Angelo Papotti discuss what this means for the Parent-Subsidiary Directive.

Taxing multinationals in the digital services sector has remained a complex international challenge for local governments limited in their jurisdictional capabilities. Tremonti’s Lorenzo Piccardi, Simone Zucchetti and Armando Tardini discuss how Italy is facing these challenges through regulatory developments surrounding permanent establishments and web taxes.

Italy has one of Europe’s most active leveraged buyout markets, and local regulators have been eager to ensure such activity is sufficiently taxed. LED Taxand’s Guido Arie Petraroli and Patrizio Braccioni explore recent legislative tax changes in Italy and Europe and how this will impact private equity activity.

Transatlantic deals between the US and Europe have fallen since the end of 2017, although activity levels in the US domestic market have increased. Can this be attributed to US tax reform? And what has US tax reform meant for transatlantic M&A more generally? EY’s James Hume and Joe Toce consider these questions and the broader impact on due diligence, financing and post-acquisition integration.

While US tax reform may not have affected merger and acquisition (M&A) activity explicitly, a change in laws surrounding controlled foreign corporations (CFCs) will see a number of new tax considerations emerge for US buyers and sellers. Fenwick & West’s Adam Halpern and William Skinner discuss how these changes might influence cross-border M&A activity.