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Chris Walsh and Bernadette Pinamont of Vertex look at the rise of public, non-regulatory scrutiny of multinational tax affairs, and outline best practices for in-house tax teams to deal with such scrutiny.

Lam Kok Shang and Gan Hwee Leng of KPMG preview the introduction of goods and services tax (GST) in Malaysia from April 1 2015, comparing it with the equivalent regime in Singapore and explaining what taxpayers must do to prepare for the incoming changes.

Chris Van Loan

Rossitza Koleva The Bulgarian government promulgated in May 2014 the law amending and supplementing one of the country's key economic laws, the Public Procurement Act (PPA), by introducing a number of changes, some effective as of July 1 2014 and others as of October 1 2014. The main target is to increase transparency and improve the supervision of procedures, as well as to eliminate the possibilities for corruption. The PPA is placed in a very dynamic environment – both at European and national level – and this determines the need for its adaptation. On the one hand the Act regulates the procedures to be followed for spending of public funds for the implementation of state, municipality and other public entity projects, while on the other hand, precisely because of this focus of the law, it could become, if applied effectively and correctly, one of the main levers of market regulation. The manner in which the Act is applied effects whether small and medium-sized enterprises will be encouraged, whether the market competition will increase, whether citizens will feel that public funds are being spent effectively and appropriately for the benefit of the community, and ultimately, whether the confidence in the institutions and the authority of the public sector will increase.

Donald Vella

Aleksandra Rafailovic After Serbia's double taxation avoidance agreements with Georgia, Canada, Tunisia and Vietnam became effective on January 1 2014, the list of 54 treaty states will soon be extended by Armenia, the agreement with which was ratified in July. The treaty on the avoidance of double taxation between the Government of the Republic of Serbia and the Government of the Republic of Armenia was signed in Yerevan on March 10 2014, while the law on ratification, and the text of the treaty, were published in the Official Gazette of Republic of Serbia no. 7/14 of July 3 2014, and will enter into force in the near future, once ratified by the Republic of Armenia.

Giuliano Foglia

Andrew Miles A company's sole purpose was to own and manage an investment project on behalf of a provincial government. However, its principal refused to accept responsibility for the losses and a lengthy legal battle began. At one point the company's position at court appeared hopeless and it wrote off its claim. This led to a large loss in the accounts and to the realisation that the government would no longer accept the company as a business partner. Faced with the loss of its business, it went into liquidation. In the event, the liquidator was more successful at court than the previous management and ultimately won the case. This resulted in a liquidation profit roughly equal to the loss brought forward. At this point the minimum taxation rule took effect with the consequence that basically only 60% of the loss brought forward could be offset against current income. Since the liquidation assessment is necessarily the final assessment in a company's lifetime, the remaining loss carry-forward lapsed. The company argued that the minimum taxation provision was an unconstitutional offence against the guarantee of unfettered ownership. The Supreme Tax Court accepts the minimum taxation provision as being within the constitution in the normal course of events. The primary effect was deferral in the legitimate interests of securing public finance. Even the confiscatory effect of taxing part of the profit earned in a final period while allowing a remaining loss carry-forward to lapse unused did not offend against the constitution. The guarantee of unfettered ownership is not a guarantee of business success. However, the court sees the present case as something of an exception in that the cause of the loss and the cause of the profit – write-down and write-back of a receivable – are inseparable. The profit is the consequence of the loss and to treat it differently to the permanent disadvantage of the taxpayer is to breach the constitutional demand for equal treatment of like circumstances. The matter has now been referred to the Constitutional Court for a final decision.

Sarah Drye

The impact on companies of a string of senior-level departures from the Internal Revenue Service in the US earlier this year got another airing during the dispute resolution and controversy management panel of International Tax Review and TPWeek’s 14th annual Global Transfer Pricing Forum in Washington, DC last week.