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Bob van der Made EU leaders reached the following conclusions in respect of EU tax policy at their meeting on December 19 – 20 2013 in Brussels: Recalling its conclusions of May 2013, the European Council calls for further progress at the global and EU levels in the fight against tax fraud and evasion, aggressive tax planning, BEPS and money laundering. The European Council welcomes work undertaken in the OECD and other international fora to respond to the challenge of taxation and ensure fairness and effectiveness of tax systems, in particular the development of a global standard for automatic exchange of information, so as to ensure a level playing-field. Building on the momentum towards more transparency in tax matters, the European Council calls on the Council to reach unanimous political agreement on the Directive on administrative cooperation in early 2014. It calls for speeding up the negotiations with European third countries and asks the Commission to present a progress report to its March meeting. In the light of this, the revised Directive on the taxation of savings income will be adopted by March 2014. The European Council also takes note of the Council progress report to EU leaders on tax issues, welcomes the establishment by the Commission of an EU high level expert group on taxation of the digital economy, and invites the Commission to take into account the (parallel) work at the OECD, and report back to the Council as soon as possible. Progress should also be made quickly towards agreement on amending the EU Parent-Subsidiary Directive. The European Council calls for further progress on the disclosure of non-financial information by large groups. As to the Parent-Subsidiary Directive: outgoing EU Tax Commissioner Algirdas Semeta is eager to reach unanimous political agreement in the ECOFIN Council by May or June 2014. However, for this to happen it is understood that the Commission will need to drop its proposed introduction of a common general anti-avoidance rule, as there seems no unanimous support among member states for this. It is understood that the other main strand of the Commission's proposal to neutralise the distorting effects of mismatches resulting from differences in the tax treatment of hybrid loans between member states, should be successful and might be adopted by ECOFIN before the summer or in the second half of 2014. This largely depends on whether the European Parliament can issue its Opinion before the European elections.

Janusz Fiszer (pictured left) has joined the GESSEL law office in Warsaw as a partner. His practice covers international tax as well as M&A and other areas of law.

The National Treasury Attorney-General's Office in Brazil is claiming that Supreme Court decisions can kill the effect of decisions in favour of taxpayers, allowing the authorities to charge taxes that were previously ruled out by the courts. However, as Joao Marcos Colussi of Mattos Filho explains, other courts do not agree

Alex Pankratz has joined Baker & McKenzie's global tax practice in Toronto as a partner, to advise global, US and Canadian companies on Canadian tax planning and transactional matters.

Spain should have to pay the European Commission €50 million ($68 million) and the costs of the case for failing to implement a European Court of Justice (ECJ) decision against tax incentives in good time.

The Tax Court of Canada favoured the Canada Revenue Agency's arguments just before Christmas in a case concerning a receivable sales agreement between the McKesson Canada and its parent company in Luxembourg. But the loser is refusing to take ‘no’ for an answer.

Matthew Lerner has joined Sidley Austin’s Washington, DC office as a partner and a co-global coordinator of the tax controversy practice.

Stephen Alleway has joined a new transfer pricing advisory firm, Questro, which is opening its first office in Zurich.

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) saw pharmaceutical company McKesson’s arguments dismissed by the Tax Court in December 2013 but the company has now filed its arguments with the Federal Court of Appeal.

The question of who owns intangible property has been at the forefront of many transfer pricing controversies. Aydin Hayri and Darcy Alamuddin present a framework for identifying the economic or beneficial owner of intangible property, which from a transfer pricing perspective can be just as important as legal ownership, and illustrates its use in the case study of a hypothetical life sciences company.