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US law firm Dewey Ballantine has expanded its London office with the recruitment of 11 new lawyers.

Davis Polk & Wardwell is advising Enersis on a rights offering to its shareholders of up to $1 billion in newly issued ordinary shares. The Chile-based Enersis is the leading private sector electric utility company in Latin America. Partner Michael Mollerus and associate Lin Shaw, of the New York office are providing tax advice on the issue.

This year’s IFA Congress, held at Munich’s Kulturzentrum am Gasteig from September 3 to 8, drew 1,500 professionals. But despite the international flavour in terms of both attendees and subject matter, did it really succeed in dishing up what delegates were looking for?

The German tax reform legislation taking effect in January 2001 (see International Tax Review, September 2000) creates a uniform corporation tax rate of 25% for all corporate earnings, whether distributed or retained, and whether earned by a domestic corporation, a dual resident corporation, or the domestic permanent establishment (ie a branch or a limited or general partnership) of a foreign corporation. While the new law trims only five percentage points off the corporation tax rate for distributed earnings, which falls from 30% to 25%, the rate for retained earnings and for the earnings of the domestic permanent establishment of a foreign corporation plunges by a whopping 15 percentage points, from 40% to 25%. With respect to permanent establishments, the 25% rate is definitive, since no branch profits tax applies and the repatriation of earnings triggers no withholding tax, even if treaty protection is unavailable.

The Brazilian tax authorities have completed their annual round of corporate tax changes. Abel Simão Amaro and Lionel Pimentel Nobre, of Amaro, Stuber e Advogados Associados, Rio de Janeiro, look in detail at the key issues facing foreign investors

In a surprise move, California proposes an online sales tax, but the odds are against it becoming law

Kiichi Miyazawa, the Japanese finance minister, has announced that he plans a huge reform of the Japanese tax system over the next three years. An advisory committee has been created to come up with reform recommendations.

Arthur Andersen has this month published a new study that could prove a useful tool for multinationals looking to lobby government on corporate tax issues. The international comparative study takes a look at the rules governing the setting of tax standards, tax inspections and the settlement of disputes in 17 major jurisdictions around the world. The study compares jurisdictional approaches and policy in three main areas, namely tax legislation, tax inspection and tax disputes. The countries surveyed are Australia, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the US.

Hot on Germany's heels, French finance minister Laurent Fabius has announced a series of tax cuts worth around Ffr120 billion ($16 billion) over the next three years. The period of reform coincides neatly with the presidential elections planned for 2002. From this year, the corporation tax rate will be 37.77%, reducing annually until 2003 to 34.43%. These figures include the abolition of the additional 10% corporation tax, introduced in 1995, over the same time period and the immediate addition of a 3.3% increase in corporation tax.

The advocate general of the ECJ has opined against ACT payments and in favour of Hoechst and Metallgesellschaft under the freedom of establishment principle