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Luxembourg will be hit hard by next year's changes to the EU digital VAT rules.

Khoonming Ho

Zoe Kokoni Article 51A of the Immovable Property Legislation (Tenure, Registration and Valuation) (Amendment) Law, 1960 (N. A3/1960) has been amended to include Section 3, according to which the director of Department of Land and Surveys, upon the request of a credit institution, shall provide immediately any information related to immovable property, registered under the name of a physical or legal person. However, the credit institution must first acquire a license from the Department of Land and Survey to be able to request information from the Land Registry. The credit institution must state in its application the reason(s) under which they have the right to receive this information and that renders them an interested party. At the same time it must inform in writing the relevant person, for whom the information is requested, stating also the reasons.

Bob van der Made The Lithuanian EU Presidency presented its end-of-term six-monthly progress report on the EU Code of Conduct Group (Business Taxation) to the ECOFIN Council. With regard to the code group, the ECOFIN Council (the EU-28 finance ministers) of December 10 2013 subsequently:

Dionisios Stathis On July 26 2013, new Greek Tax Procedure Code (l. 4174/2013) was enacted by the Greek Parliament, which introduced for the first time the concept of general anti-avoidance rule (GAAR). In particular, according to the newly established rule, effective as of January 1 2014, the tax administration has the right to ignore any artificial arrangement or series of artificial arrangements giving rise to tax avoidance or tax benefits in general. The new rule provides for a definition, scope and brief description of the terms "arrangement", "series of arrangements" and "artificial". As regards scope, it applies to cases where the legal treatment of a sole arrangement differs from the legal treatment of a series of arrangements taken together, where no sound business reasons exist for the effecting of the arrangement (or series of arrangements), where the various arrangements taken as a whole contradict to and cancel each other and where the tax benefit(s) obtained do not reflect the business risks undertaken by the contracting parties. It is interesting to note that, contrary to other jurisdictions, Greece did not have so far any legal tradition in respect of substance over form or similar principles or doctrines emanating either from case law or from legal practice in general. Perhaps the only relevant concept in Greek legal theory was that of sham or fictitious transactions found predominantly in Greek civil law. Traditionally the Greek tax administration used to apply in the course of both domestic and treaty law the opposite general principle of form over substance which was based on the widely accepted notion that the tax rules must be interpreted narrowly by the tax administration.

Inspired by the Fair Trade Mark, the Fair Tax Mark is a new standard to promote companies pursuing ethical tax policies and reward good behaviour among taxpayers. Richard Murphy, founder and technical director of the campaign, explains why it is necessary.

Tim Martino of Baker Tilly Pitcher Partners gives a refresher on the fundamentals of the indirect tax regime in Australia, aspects of which can easily be overlooked by new and old entrants alike.

Flaherty’s back-to-back loan proposals could face a taxpayer backlash Jim Flaherty, Canadian finance minister, continued the theme of recent years when he delivered his 2014 Budget speech last week, focusing on improving the integrity of the country's tax system. He also announced measures that could see Canada acting unilaterally on issues being discussed at OECD level. With a pre-election Budget set to be handed down next year, any taxpayer-friendly measures were always likely to be overlooked this time around, so the lack of such announcements was no surprise. However, Flaherty did announce consultations on tax planning and treaty shopping, while there were also changes to the passive income rules for foreign subsidiaries.

Tom Seymour The base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) debate has been active in Australia over the last year. A number of initiatives have been introduced domestically and the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is gearing its administration to address the challenges presented by BEPS. However, many of the themes arising from the BEPS debate have been on the agenda in Australia for a number of years. In fact, it could be argued that through recent reforms in transfer pricing and anti-avoidance legislation, Australia has already implemented many of the legislative tax tools equipped to deal with risks associated with profit shifting.

Read this month's special feature on tax audits.