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Arantxa de Luis As is common knowledge, article 211 of Council Directive 2006/112/EC of November 28 2006 (VAT Directive) leaves it to the member states to lay down rules for payment in respect of the importation of goods and provides the option to establish that VAT on import need not be paid at the time of the import but rather in the periodic tax return. This election permits avoiding the financial effect derived for taxable persons from having to pay the import VAT and then recover it through deduction in the periodic VAT returns.

With multilateral projects due for final delivery, and many of 2014’s key themes lingering on, 2015 comes with a lot of unfinished business.

Andrés Edelstein

Nancy Diep

Khoonming Ho

Donald Vella

Philippe Jeffrey

Miruna Enache In an attempt to summarise the efforts deployed by the Romanian authorities for encouraging investments, this overview covers state aid schemes and other incentives available to investors at the beginning of 2015. Two state aid schemes were implemented in 2014 and are now operational (with potential for additional grants being awarded in 2015):

Rossitza Koleva An agreement between the government of the Republic of Bulgaria and the United States of America was signed earlier in December. From the Bulgarian side it was signed by Vladislav Goranov, Bulgarian Minister of Finance and, for the US side, by H.E. Marcie Ries, the US Ambassador. With this agreement, Bulgaria shall become a part of the worldwide exchange of information in compliance with the the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act ( FATCA). FATCA was voted and passed by the US Congress in 2010 and it is a tool for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to control and prevent cross-border tax evasion from citizens of the US through off-shore accounts and with financial assets abroad.

Dieter Endres After a series of political disputes, the Bundesrat gave its approval to a watered down Bill to change various tax rules on the lines of a traditional tax amendment act. While the amendments are not drastic, the Bill covers the following. An attempt to transpose the ECJ Beker and Beker judgment of December 18, 2013 (case C-168/11) into national law. The ECJ held the present method of calculating the maximum foreign tax credit to be unacceptable because it effectively reduces personal allowances in proportion to the tax-free foreign source income. The amendment does not completely achieve its object because of a drafting error. Further legislative action is to be expected.