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The TJN believe more could be done to improve the review process

The German parliament has made the changes that taxpayers need to adhere to as soon as possible

Salman Shaheen looks at the two main camps working for tax transparency, the OECD and the Tax Justice Network (TJN), and finds out why they no longer agree on the best way to stamp out avoidance.

The German Ministry of Finance published a draft Bill of the Annual Tax Act for 2013. The publication, dated March 5 2012, will implement several EU as well as OECD regulations into the German Tax Law. Oliver Wehnert and Ivo Tankov of Ernst & Young explain what these changes mean for taxpayers and their transfer pricing operations.

The shortlist for the second annual Euromoney Legal Media Group Europe Women in Business Law Awards has now been published.

UK controlled foreign company (CFC) rules are going through a period of change. The government is trying to develop EC compliant legislation that achieves the twin objectives of minimising tax leakage through avoidance, while not being perceived as a barrier to business, so allowing the UK to remain commercially competitive, explains Ross Welland, tax partner at Haines Watts.

Canada’s Federal budget in March 2012 included changes to the transfer pricing rules. Matthew Wall, a transfer pricing expert at MDW Consulting, and Susan Robins, an international tax lawyer at Robins Tax Law, explain the benefits for the tax authority and certain concerns for taxpayers and their advisers. Though required reading for Canadians, these changes should also interest other countries particularly if they have a tax treaty with Canada or if they have issues that might be corrected by making similar changes.

Raffaele Rizzi, group general counsel at Monte dei Paschi di Siena bank explains the consequences of the Italian government’s approach to tax and how a recent ruling of the Italian Supreme Court takes this approach to the extreme.

In June 2011 the German parliament decided to significantly limit the useful life of German nuclear power plants. Stefan Schultes-Schnitzlein and Michael Dettmeier of Hogan Lovells explain peculiarities of German taxation of wind farms in offshore sites within the German exclusive economic zones.

William Arrenberg and Isaac Zailer, of Herbert Smith, consider the uncertainties created by the UK tax and regulatory regime associated with North Sea decommissioning. They then compare the difficulties faced by companies in the UK with the position in a number of other jurisdictions, before finally considering the recent UK budget announcement aimed at reducing the uncertainty relating to decommissioning tax reliefs.