In two decisions, the Austrian Administrative Court (Verwaltungsgerichtshof) recently qualified the use of foreign base companies as abusive tax avoidance. The Austrian companies, in both cases, channelled interest income – which would be taxable in Austria – into foreign tax exempt or privileged subsidiaries to get such income redistributed to Austria as tax-exempt dividends. According to the court no sufficient reasons other than tax reasons were provided to justify the structure.
August 31 2005