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Tim Stewart The Court of Appeal has ruled in favour of the taxpayer in Commissioner of Inland Revenue v Diamond, concluding that the taxpayer was not resident in New Zealand for tax purposes. The Court dismissed Inland Revenue's appeal against the High Court Judge's decision, and rejected Inland Revenue's argument that Diamond's New Zealand residential investment property was a "permanent place of abode".

Rolf Saastad Wensing Li In a ruling from November 12 2015 (Herkules), the Norwegian Supreme Court stated that carried interest for tax purposes is to be treated as operational income in the general partner, rather than income of employment, which was the tax authorities' view. Hence, the tax authorities' view that the carried interest should be treated as personal income taxed at approximately 50% was overruled by the court. The court emphasised that the basis for an assessment of income classification and income allocation for tax purposes is primarily the agreements entered into by the taxpayers, to the extent they reflect the realities and are mutually binding.

Rafael Calvo Juan Salvador Pastoriza On December 17, the European General Court (EGC – a constituent court of the ECJ) handed down a judgment on joined cases T-515/13, Spain / Commission, and T-719/13, Lico Leasing, SA and Pequeños y Medianos Astilleros Sociedad de Reconversión, SA / Commission. That judgment overturned the Commission's decision on a proceeding finding that the Spanish tax lease system (STLS) constituted illegal state aid, because the EGC considered that the measures composing that system do not constitute a selective advantage.

Switzerland has strict e-invoicing rules. However, thanks to the principle of free consideration of evidence (contained in article 81 (3) of the Swiss VAT Law), the strict e-invoicing rules which require that all VAT relevant e-invoices are digitally signed by one of the four Swiss-admitted digital signature providers can be met with other methods of comparable quality.

Fred Lo, vice president and global head of tax at Yanfeng Global Automotive Interiors, a joint venture between the automotive interiors businesses of Johnson Controls and Shanghai Motors, analyses recent tax treaty trends, focusing on mismatches in treaty terms and why some countries are more equal than others.

Álvaro Pereira Ruben Gottberg According to the recently enacted Law 13.202/15, the social contribution on net income (CSLL, by its Portuguese acronym) falls under the scope of Brazilian double tax treaties (DTTs).

Nancy Diep Canada's thin-capitalisation rules operate to deny all or part of an interest expense in Canada for a taxation year if the amount of the interest-bearing debt owing by a borrower to specified non-residents (that is, persons who hold – or do not deal at arm's-length with persons that hold – 25% or more of the applicable votes or value of the borrower) exceeds the borrower's equity by more than a 1.5:1 ratio. Any excess interest that is not deductible for a taxation year is also treated as a deemed dividend subject to Canadian withholding tax.

Alexander Linn Thorsten Braun Germany's Federal Tax Court (BFH) has asked the German Ministry of Finance to join a pending case on the intra-group exception to the German real estate transfer tax (RETT) (case ref. II R 62/14). One of the issues raised by the BFH relates to the question of whether or not the intra-group exception has been notified to the European Commission as potential state aid.

Sandra Benedetto Back Santiago López Lugo As we have reported in previous updates, Chile is going through substantial changes in its tax system. In September 2014, the Chilean government enacted Law 20,780 introducing major modifications to the core of the tax system, affecting its foundation in a significant way (the 2014 tax reform). 2015 was the year in which the Chilean IRS focused its efforts on issuing administrative regulations on the different topics covered by the tax reform, to provide taxpayers guidelines on how the tax reform would be implemented.

‘Transparency’ is the latest term of art that has emerged from the OECD’s Action Plan with respect to its base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) initiatives. But the obvious question that has consciously been ignored in the public domain is: where are the matching transparencies regarding determination of tax risks and identification of substantive issues by tax authorities upon commencement and conduct of an audit?