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The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has overruled a lower court decision and found that a bank may recover excess taxes it paid after purchasing distressed savings and loan (S&L) associations.

European Commission

The Australian Tax Office (ATO) has released new guidance on its advance pricing agreement (APA) programme.

Hong Kong has introduced significant changes to its intellectual property (IP) regime that will promote wider application of IP and encourage the development of creative industries.

Agnieszka Bienkowska The Polish administrative court recently ruled on the the issue of VAT refunds which Poland is obliged to give to non-Polish entrepreneurs based on the 8th EU VAT Directive. According to the directive, as well as the corresponding Polish regulations in force before 2010, VAT refund claims submitted by foreign entities should have been processed and refunds should have been granted no later than six months from the claim submission day. Polish law provided, however, that the tax authorities may prolong this deadline if they believe an additional verification of the claim is required. There was also no clear provision that would allow applicants to claim interest, if the refund proved justified. This often meant it took years to get a VAT refund in Poland. Not being obliged to pay interest, the Polish tax authorities were using every single formal inaccuracy to prolong the refund deadline.

Rolf Saastad Following the Manninen and Fokus Bank cases from 2004, the Norwegian Ministry of Finance confirmed in 2006 that the dividend taxation regime was not in accordance with the EEA agreement. This applied both to Norwegian withholding tax levied on dividends paid to non-Norwegian EEA resident shareholders and to Norwegian income tax on dividends received from companies resident in EEA. The ministry accordingly allowed taxpayers to reclaim taxes for the periods commencing from January 1 2003.

Sead Dado Salkovic Advertising and promotion are the main forms of the publicity activities of companies. Keeping this in mind, all tax aspects of these expenditures have to be taken into consideration as well as the reflection they make on the tax balances of the company.

Suzanne Boers For decades, the Netherlands has been pursuing an active treaty policy. In concluding new tax treaties, the Netherlands aims to maintain and strengthen its position as attractive place of investment for international business and to combat tax fraud. Recently, the Dutch Ministry of Finance published a new memorandum regarding the Dutch policy on tax treaties.

Elena Kostovska The FYR Macedonian VAT Law provides for the possibility of VAT refund for non-residents given that some conditions are met.

Elena Kostovska Lorena Kurti In the last 3 months of 2010, a number of changes were introduced to the Albanian income tax law, most of them already effective as of the beginning of 2011.