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COMMENT: George Osborne used inappropriate figures when boasting of the UK government’s success in clamping down on tax avoidance during the latest Budget, the UK Statistics Authority has found.

The number of tax disputes is increasing rapidly around the world. The trend is encouraging governments to turn to alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in a bid to reduce backlogs in the courts. While ADR is well established in some jurisdictions, in others it is just getting going. Aaran Fronda looks at how ADR has become an increasingly viable solution for resolving tax disputes.

Philippe Jeffrey

Khoonming Ho

Erion Lena The Law no. 7928, dated April 27 1995 'On Value Added Tax', as amended, implemented a scheme of deferral and exemption from the payment of VAT. Based on paragraph 2.1 of article 26 of the Law no. 7928, for machinery and equipment imported by taxable persons, which is directly related to their economic activity, the scheme of postponing the payment of VAT for a period of up to 12 months applies, under which VAT is not payable to the Customs authorities at the time of import.

Bryan Bailey

Constanze Adolf, of Green Budget Europe, looks at environmental fiscal reform (EFR) in a post-crisis context, assessing the prospects for EFR to raise government revenue and promote the polluter-pays principle.

Ayesha Lau

Myranda Chatzimatthaiou

Bob van der Made The EU's Code of Conduct Group for business taxation is reviewing the existing intellectual property (IP) regimes in nine EU member states from a harmful tax practices viewpoint, particularly with regard to the point of substantial economic activity in the member state that grants the relief (the third criterion of the Code Group). At the request of the ECOFIN Council of June 20 2014, the Code Group continues to analyse the third criterion and assess or consider all existing patent boxes in the EU, including those already assessed or considered before, by the end of 2014 "against the background of international developments" including the OECD's BEPS initiative. The European Commission, which assists the work of the Code Group, meanwhile has gathered information already under EU state aid law with respect to one member state and written informally to others. The OECD has started looking into harmful tax practices again under BEPS Action 5 as well, and the Code Group is now looking to fall in behind the OECD work on the same topic, where possible.