Anyone who thought the EU’s anti-tax avoidance directive was going to streamline 28 Member States’ different rules into a single harmonious EU whole is either a supreme optimist, doesn’t work in tax, or does work for the European Commission. At least that’s my conclusion from some research I’ve been doing into how EU Member States are implementing the directive’s controlled foreign company (CFC) provisions into their domestic laws. So what’s the cause of the problem? Well, the ATAD is not just one fixed set of rules that have to be copy-pasted into each country’s statute book. Member States are free (up to a point) to choose their own words, adapt their existing rules, impose even stricter –
Nine takeaways based on my article on the European Commission’s state aid tax case against the hamburger giant: Tax Notes International, February 4, 2019. If you want to check out the Commission’s decisions, here are the links to the initial and final versions. 1. The Commission appears to rely almost entirely on statements made by McDonalds, its tax advisor and the Luxembourg tax administration, regarding the position under US tax law. Why didn’t it carry out its own independent investigation? 2. It can be argued, based on a plain reading of the treaty text, that Luxembourg was only required to exempt if there would have been double taxation if it didn’t. Since the initial decision made cle
