Many European companies are attracted to Maltabecause of its full imputation system, more commonlyknown as the international holding company regime.In fact, a vast majority of German blue chips run aMalta holding or finance company.[...]

The Latin principle pacta sunt servanda (‘‘agreementsmust be kept’’) serves as a cornerstone of socialinteraction, peace, and justice. If a breach of contractdid not have some sort of ramification, the motivationto stick to the stipulations of the treaty would decreasegreatly, the...

If German tax law was a river flowing over all businesstransactions and commercial accounting, thelast words of Norman Maclean in A River Runs ThroughIt best suit the traditional relationship between commercialand tax accounting. For more than 100 yearsthe principle of strict book-tax conformity...

Many of our previous columns dealt with theframework and the aftermath of the major corporatetax reform (Unternehmenssteuerreformgesetz) in2008. The reform included a fundamental modificationof the German thin cap rule, or Zinsschranke (see TaxNotes Int’l, July 16, 2007, p. 263, Doc...

The tax issue causing uproar in Germany and Switzerlandhas all the ingredients for a good story. Itis about tax law, those who break it, and the ultimatequestion whether the government itself is infringing onthe law when buying stolen data. Moreover, it is aboutthe opinion of the vast majority...

Foreign partners in German partnerships shouldtake note of the new statutory treatment of specialpayments (Sondervergütungen) now codified in section50d paragraph 10 of the Income Tax Act (Einkommensteuergesetz,or EStG). The question iswhether these special payments qualify as businessprofits...

The fight against tax havens has caused some majordistortions in the relationship between Germanyand Switzerland. Similar to the approach used in theUnited States in the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, Germanyintensified its measures to prevent tax evasion byits own citizens starting with a German...

In Shakespeare’s play The Taming of the Shrew, theprotagonist tames his beloved one. Lately, Germanpolitics has presented The Taming of the Heuschrecken(grasshoppers). Heuschrecken is the politically incorrectdescription for private equity companies, so named byFranz Müntefering, the leader...

It is more than just a rule. A statutory general antiabuserule is a statement — a statement of tax jurisdictions,whether the lawmaker or the judges are primarilyin charge of targeting the cases that lack bothsubstance and business reasons. Most countries in continentalEurope incorporated a...

This is a short tale of those who play the gameand those who don’t. The name of the game is‘‘function shifting,’’ often played moderately, sometimesaggressively, by multinational corporations,but always under the alert eyes of the tax authorities.Those who play the game argue that...