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Brazilian tax authorities have said that no relief should be granted for withholding tax on payment to foreign not-for-profit organisations under the Brazil-France double tax agreement (DTA).

Mexico’s First Circuit Court has recently ruled against a taxpayer in a case involving two transfer pricing adjustments that will make it tougher for companies to comply with their domestic tax obligations on time.

Tax incentives in Croatia for research and development (R&D) projects were granted between 2007 and 2014 based on Articles 111 a. to 111 f. of the Act on Scientific Activity and Higher Education. However, the European Union issued Commission Regulation (EU) No. 651/2014 in June 2014, concerning certain categories of state aid; this used significantly different terminology, definitions, and requirements, and rendered the abovementioned articles invalid. Croatian entrepreneurs found themselves in something of a vacuum for more than three years, awaiting a new legal framework for R&D incentives, as the relevant tax incentive had been abolished on January 1 2015. In July 2018, the Croatian Parliament adopted and published the Act on State Aid for Research and Development Projects, which the government had submitted in January 2018.

In general terms, inherence can be described as the relationship between the cost and the enterprise, where the cost has a specific relevance to the determination of income; this is a result of its connection not to a specific revenue, but rather to an activity potentially able to produce income. Based on this assumption, in order to consider a cost deductible (i.e. inherent), the taxpayer is required to demonstrate clearly the connection with the activity, providing the tax authority with "sufficient" documentation.

The EU VAT committee published guidelines (page 228) on April 26 2018 on the VAT treatment of cash pooling arrangements.

Georgian and Saudi officials signed an income tax treaty on March 14 2018, which has been forwarded for ratification.

The Bulgarian Ministry of Labour and Social Politics recently adopted an ordinance for employment-related electronic documents and the requirements for their creation and storage in an employee's file. The ordinance is effective as of May 19 2018 and is based on Article 128b, paragraph 3 of the Labour Code.

The Albanian Parliament on July 9 2018 approved a draft law submitted by the Council of Ministers that proposed several changes to income tax.

The head of Egypt's tax authority (ETA) Emad Sami said on August 26 2018 that an amendment to the Income Tax Act had been drafted to allow the finance minister to access corporate bank accounts to help combat tax evasion.