It used to be almost certain that the European Courtof Justice would follow the opinion of the advocategeneral in its judgment, but those days are gone. Thelatest examples of this change in heart are ColumbusContainer (C-298/05) and Lidl Belgium (C-414/06). (Forthe ECJ judgment in Columbus...

No doubt Christopher Columbus would have feltshortchanged if he knew the continent he discovereddoes not carry his name. In 1507, when the cartographerMartin Waldseemüller designed his famousworld map, he searched for a name for the Terra Nova(New World) and chose America, after the...

All good comes at a price. The German corporatetax reform is good overall,1 but the major benefit,the tax rate cut, comes with a tightened andhighly detrimental change of ownership rule. TheGerman term Mantelkauf, literally translated as‘‘coat purchase,’’ is deceiving — it sounds and...

‘‘Old taxes are good taxes’’ might have been theconviction of the German lawmakers that supportedthe German trade tax. The survival of this tax wasanything but certain, because in late 2005 measureshad already been taken for the tax’s farewell ceremony.Newspaper stories announced the...

[...]Major industrial countries tend to follow themainstream, cutting corporate tax rates and simultaneouslybroadening the tax base. Countries on themainstream path also want to tighten antiabuseprovisions such as the thin cap rules and, in Germany,the anti-treaty-shopping rules, described inour...