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Giuliano Foglia

Bob van der Made It is understood a number of meetings were held in the first half of January between French Finance Minister Sapin and French issuers, the French banking industry and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Apparently, in a dramatic shift of position, France now supports a broader-based EU financial transaction tax (FTT) with a large range of financial instruments included in the scope, combined with lower tax rates. This move would align the French position more to that of Germany and the smaller ECP-11 member states (the countries participating in the enhanced cooperation procedure). At least one other big member state, Italy, is actively supporting the French on this initiative. Spain apparently is sitting on the fence. Although by mid-January no new documents or concrete compromise proposal had been circulated to the ECP-11, French President Hollande is intent on reaching an agreement on EU FTT with the ECP-11 as soon as possible in 2015.

Shane Hogan

Tim Stewart The New Zealand government has released two reports detailing its tax policy work regarding base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) issues. The reports were prepared several months ago by Inland Revenue and Treasury officials to update government ministers on BEPS issues and were more recently released to the public. The OECD's work on BEPS issues has been well publicised. New Zealand has been actively involved in the OECD's BEPS work, and the New Zealand government has been considering whether changes to New Zealand's domestic laws may be necessary to address BEPS concerns in the country.

This year's Academy Awards will be held on February 22 and see an array of awards for the year's top directors, actors, films, songs and more. For those who aren't familiar with the Oscars, they are essentially a less well-known version of ITR's European and American Tax Awards. Sardonic platitudes aside, however, the equally well-known events do have one thing in common and yes, you guessed it: it's tax.

Tax Relief normally pays little attention to personal taxes, certainly in his working life. He prefers to limit the blind panic to tax filing season between October and January. Feeling a bit smug this year, however – yes, the tax return has been sent in – he couldn't help taking a peek at HMRC's late filing statistics and what a story they tell about UK taxpayers.

As global communications become more efficient, developing countries are fast-tracking their progress to becoming global economies – with VAT and excise tax reforms a crucial part of that process. Meredith McBride speaks with indirect tax leaders to pinpoint the issues that will have taxpayers and their advisers scratching their heads in 2015.

With only one financial quarter left before Malaysia rolls out its 6% goods and services tax (GST), Subromaniam Tholasy, the government’s director of GST, is pushing an ambitious agenda for training internal staff, preparing the public, and publishing guidelines on exempted items. Here, he gives Meredith McBride the lie of the land.

Peter Dachs With effect from January 1 2015 certain limitations will be imposed on the deduction of interest incurred, inter alia, by debtors in the following instances:

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.