ITR Search | International Tax Review

Restructuring and VAT: Mind the traps

Taxpayers must pay attention to value-added tax issues when dealing with restructurings in Switzerland, warn Michaela Merz and Tobias Meier Kern of PricewaterhouseCoopers

March 02 2005

The legislature and Federal Court send mixed signals on M&A

New merger legislation clarifies corporate and tax law and has improved Switzerland's appeal as a business location, point out Peter Uebelhart, Michel Jaggi and Jean-David Wenger of KPMG

March 02 2005

Amendments to corporate tax system lack breadth

A second round of corporate tax reform is on the way. Current proposals are of limited scope, points out Marcel Widrig of PricewaterhouseCoopers

March 02 2005

Switzerland maintains key position in transfer-pricing

Transfer pricing is central to the realization of defensible, efficient business models, value-chain designs, and corporate-tax optimization planning, as well as opportunities for M&A, argues Norbert Raschle of PricewaterhouseCoopers

March 02 2005

Business information payment to a Spanish company is business profit

The Authority for Advance Rulings recently held (Dun and Bradstreet Espana S A, In re, [2005] 272 ITR 99 (AAR)) that payment made by an Indian company to a Spanish company for permission to download business information for Indian customers is taxable as business profits of the Spanish company and not as a royalty or fee for technical services.

March 01 2005

ECJ to revisit the old thin-capitalization rules

In December 2002 the European Court of Justice (ECJ) held that the German thin-capitalization rules (section 8a Corporate Income Tax Law or CITL) as in force through 2003 (old thin-capitalization rules) violated the freedom-of-establishment clause of the European Community Treaty (article 43 EC Treaty) when applied to shareholders resident in EU member states. As a result, the German government enacted new thin-capitalization rules for fiscal years beginning after December 31 2003.

March 01 2005

UK time limit for EC law claims restricted

In a decision of February 4 2005 in the case of CIR and the Attorney General v Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, the UK Court of Appeal decided that claims for compensation or restitution in respect of advance corporation tax (ACT) wrongly paid as a result of the ECJ decision in the Metallgesellschaft case are statute-barred six years after the date of payment of the tax.

March 01 2005

Tax base increases for service providers

On December 30 2004 the Brazilian tax authorities issued Provisional Measure 232 that increased taxation for Brazilian service providers calculating income tax under a presumed-profits method. Taxpayers in Brazil have the option (subject to some restrictions) to calculate corporate income tax and social contribution using an actual-profits method (Lucro Real) or a presumed-profits method (Lucro Presumido).

March 01 2005

Three-year transition announced for IFRS and thin capitalization

The International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) came into effect in Australia on January 1 2005. It was clear some time ago that these new accounting standards would impact directly on Australia's thin-capitalization rules, which seek to limit interest expense deductions for certain taxpayers that exceed certain debt-to-asset ratios. This is because the thin-capitalization safe harbour calculation is made with reference to accounts prepared in accordance with Australian accounting standards.

March 01 2005

The need to restructure Dutch conduit entities

Many taxpayers need to change their Dutch conduit entities before December 31 2005 to comply with new Dutch corporate tax legislation, warns Jos Peters of the Rima Marlyn Tax Consultancy.

March 01 2005

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