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Pierre-Yves Bourtourault: VAT in the EU is still highly complex The French tax practice of Landwell, the PricewaterhouseCoopers-affiliated law firm, has lost a high profile value-added tax (VAT) partner to Baker & McKenzie. Thierry Vialaneix specializes in VAT advice for manufacturing, distribution, tourism, finance and media companies. He joined Baker & McKenzie's Paris office in November 2004.

The US tax system benefits from a healthy interchange of tax professionals between the Treasury and the IRS on the one hand and law and accounting firms on the other. Many tax specialists, such as Deborah Harrington, remain in government for three or four years before returning to private practice. Harrington returned to Deloitte on November 19 2004.

The Revenue Laws Amendment Acts was passed by parliament in November 2004. These are omnibus Acts that amend a number of different fiscal Acts of Parliament (relating to areas including income tax, value-added tax, stamp duty and customs duty).

The original proposal sent to the Congress to amend the Income Tax Law has suffered some changes regarding thin-capitalization rules that would enter into force on January 1 2005.

There are various entity forms of doing business in foreign countries that exist between corporate form and the kumiai form. The Japanese tax treatment for each entity form is unclear. Especially regarding US limited liability corporations (US LLCs) and US limited partnerships (US LPs), there are no clear guidelines to help determine whether these entity forms are subject to corporate level taxation or pass-through taxation for purposes of Japanese taxes.

Comprehensive tax reform is set to transform how companies calculate how much they owe. Among the many changes is a cut in the tax rate, explain Manuel Solano, Federico Aguilar, Alberto Lopez and Terri Grosselin of Ernst & Young

As the UK High Court is about to give details of its referral of a thin-capitalization group litigation order to the European Court of Justice (ECJ), Philip Martin, formerly deputy head of tax at retailer Marks & Spencer, has abruptly left Dorsey & Whitney, the US law firm handling the order for claimants including Pepsi, Volvo and a subsidiary of Caterpillar.

The introduction of a capital gains tax (CGT) in Hong Kong would be deeply unpopular according to members of the tax community there. Henry Tang, Hong Kong's finance secretary has proposed the introduction of a CGT to increase tax revenues, reduce Hong Kong's spiralling fiscal deficit and broaden the tax base.

Two decisions from the House of Lords, the UK's highest court, have failed to give definitive guidance on tax avoidance in the UK. In the Scottish Provident case, which the Inland Revenue won, the law lords ruled on November 25 2004 that a court may need to consider a series of transactions when applying a tax law. But in a separate ruling on the same day, the Inland Revenue lost a verdict to Barclays Mercantile which confirmed that business purpose may not be necessary to enjoy a tax benefit. See the February 2005 issue for full-length feature.

By the end of 2004 Germany will have enacted two bills transposing major EU secondary legislation into German law: