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by Richard Collier-Keywood, UK head of tax, PricewaterhouseCoopers

Kevin Phillips, an international corporate tax partner at Ernst & Young in London, left to join Baker Tilly on May 19 2004. Phillips specializes in cross-border tax issues, particularly in US-UK international tax matters. He was at Ernst & Young since 1986.

The UK Chartered Institute of Taxation appointed John Beattie as its new president on May 21 2004. Beattie served at the Inland Revenue before joining KPMG in 1979. Peter Kempster, a tax consultant at Nabarro Nathanson in London, was appointed deputy president. John Cullinane, a tax partner at Deloitte in London, was appointed vice president.

Massimo Agostini: Cross-border deals are

The government has finally published, in draft, details of the types of arrangement that will be subject to the new tax planning reporting requirements announced in the March 2004 Budget. The rules will focus initially on employment tax planning, use of financial products and VAT planning.

US taxpayers recently scored an important victory in Dover Corp v. Commissioner, which has monumental ramifications in the US tax treatment for disposing of non-US operations.

The new Japan-US tax treaty provides that the contracting states shall conduct transfer-pricing examinations of enterprises and evaluate applications for advance pricing arrangements in accordance with the OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines. In connection with this policy, a new methodology for an arm's-length price, transactional-net-margin method (TNMM), which is provided by the guidelines, has been introduced by the Japanese 2004 Tax Reform, as one of the acceptable methods in calculating the arm's length price.

The French tax authorities use the abuse-of-law theory as an obstacle to oppose tax avoidance schemes when the latter are deemed excessive. In order to apply this theory, the French tax authorities must have evidence of either the fictitious nature of the transaction (interposition of persons, fictive or disguised deed) or an exclusive tax-driven purpose. The French Administrative Supreme Court (Conseil d'Etat, January 17 1994, Chollet) or the French Civil Supreme Court (Cass. Com., December 10 1996, Sté RMC France) interpret this notion in a restrictive way. In particular, restructurings, the effects of which generally go beyond the strict field of tax, are unlikely to fall within the scope of the abuse-of-law theory.

The Brazilian government issued on January 29 2004, Provisional Measure (PM) 164/2004. This PM introduced new regulations to subject imports of goods and services to the social integration program contribution-import (PIS) and social security financing-import (COFINS).

The UK is one of the few countries in the world to have separate agencies for collecting direct and indirect tax. Now the plan is to unite them. Simon Briault assesses the reaction to the merger of the Inland Revenue and Customs & Excise