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By Eduardo Abad and Ramón Tejada, Garrigues

New Zealand's tax policy work programme for 2006 will help "to ensure our tax arrangements remain competitive with trading parties like Australia to encourage investment and promote productivity.", the country's revenue minister has said. High on the list of priorities was a business tax review, measures to increase productivity and growth, and New Zealand's international tax rules. Peter Dunne outlined the blueprint when addressing the annual conference of New Zealand branch of the International Fiscal Association in Wellington.

Diagram 1: Tax contributions of all survey participants by tax A PricewaterhouseCoopers survey of most of the UK's top 100 companies has found corporate tax payments account for just half of their £18 billion ($31.2 billion) tax bill.

Treasury and the IRS have promulgated new temporary regulations to allow the making of late purging elections in order to eliminate the passive foreign investment company (PFIC) taint on ownership of shares in certain foreign corporations. This procedure, which requires IRS approval, should help taxpayers who have inadvertently fallen under the PFIC rules.

The Minister of Finance presented his Budget speech to parliament on February 15 2006. Apart from announcing changes in tax rates, allowances, exemption thresholds, and the like, the documentation accompanying the Budget speech also spelt out a number of tax-related issues to which attention would be given, and possible amendments to the law to be made.

By Patrick Meiisel, Axel Mielke and Frank Schmidt, PricewaterhouseCoopers

The nature of M&A means transactions are likely to be cross-border and complex. Tax authorities in different jurisdictions do not always use the same criteria for the treatment of the same structure. That makes it imperative that international businesses receive world-class tax advice to help them through the task of dealing with the complex M&A tax rules that some countries have enacted.

By Marie-France Vernay and Sophie Marciniak, Taj, société d'avocats, member of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu

A recent case has made clear the risks for taxpayers in the Netherlands if they lack documentary evidence of the economic substance of intercompany transactions, warn Eduard Sporken and Hayden Aalvik of KPMG Meijburg & Co

China will enact a law during the present session of the National People's Congress to unify foreign and domestic corporate tax rates, according to Jiang Enzhu, a Congress spokesman.