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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.

Dajana Topic At the beginning of 2014, the price of cigarettes in Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) increased due to the Decision on the rate of specific excise duty and the overall minimum excise duty on cigarettes. Six months later, in June 2014, the Bosnian parliament adopted another set of amendments to the Law on Excise, which entered into force in July 2014 and is applicable as of August 1 2014. This time, the basic changes affect the excise duty on cigarettes, with the overall excise duty being increased from BAM 126 (€65) to BAM 176 (€90) per 1,000 cigarettes.

The latest international updates from our correspondents around the world.

Michal Spychalski The Polish Ministry of Finance has announced proposed amendments to the VAT Act. The introduction of this package – according to the Ministry of Finance – will increase the effectiveness of the fight against VAT fraud. The new rules will primarily concern the domestic reverse charge mechanism, joint and several tax liability, as well as rules of VAT deduction in case of goods and services used for mixed purposes. The Ministry of Finance is planning to implement these amendments from January 2015. The domestic VAT reverse charge mechanism will be extended and will cover new products, such as mobile phones (including smartphones), portable computers (tablets, notebooks, laptops) and video game consoles. From 2015 reverse charge will also apply to raw gold and certain steel products whose characteristics are similar to products already covered by this mechanism. The domestic reverse charge will only apply if the purchaser is registered as the VAT taxpayer, and – in case of mobile phones – only if daily net amount of sale to one purchaser exceeded 20,000 PLN ($6,000).

Bob van der Made The Informal ECOFIN Council meeting on September 13 2014 in Milan included a behind-closed-doors political discussion among the EU-28 finance ministers on the way forward with the EU financial transaction tax (FTT) under enhanced cooperation (no minutes or conclusions of these informal council meetings are published). It is understood that although no substantial progress has been made or communicated after the informal ECOFIN, it seems that the participating EU-11 member states in the enhanced cooperation procedure (EU-11; Austria, Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain) are now closer to a compromise agreement than they have been. The project now seems to go in the direction of a UK-style stamp duty but with revenue sharing among the participating member states to keep the smaller EU-11 on board.

Tim Stewart Expatriates with residential investment properties in New Zealand can breathe easier after the High Court allowed the taxpayer's appeal in Diamond v Commissioner of Inland Revenue. The case concerned whether a residential investment property in New Zealand that Diamond had owned but never lived in could be his "permanent place of abode" such that Diamond was a New Zealand tax resident and, therefore, liable to New Zealand tax on his worldwide income. New Zealand has two main tests to determine if an individual is tax resident. A day-count test and the "permanent place of abode" test. It is only necessary to satisfy one of these tests. Diamond was not resident under the day-count test as he was absent from New Zealand for the required period of time during the relevant tax years.

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