The Court of Appeal of Liege has just handed down a decision favourable to the taxpayer's right to remain silent in a tax case.

In the outgoing Leterme II government, nobody knew for sure which countries were to appear in the new tax haven list. Some States, dissatisfied to appear on the list, had threatened to put an end to...

The financial crisis and the high taxation States' reaction turned the tax lawyers' habits up side down. The war against tax haven and the threats on some form of bank secrecy will make obsolete cer...

In a decision of 29 April 2010, the Court of Appeal of Brussels has set the record straight about presumptions and the conclusive force of official reports of the VAT administration.

By a decision dating 15 December 2009, the Court of Appeal of Ghent reminded us, quite appropriately, some basic principles concerning the questioning by the tax department of the use of foreign com...

Under Article 354 BTC/92, investigations aiming at imposing taxes or tax supplements shall be carried out within three years from 1 January of the fiscal year for which the tax is due. An additiona...

Article 198, 10° of the CIR/92, introduced by the 23 December 2009 framework act imposes that taxpayers liable for corporation tax or for non-resident/company tax declare any payment of 100.000 EUROS ...

Before the legislative reform, the interpretation of articles 355 and 356 CIR/92 made tongues wag.

Europe legitimately sees in competition an irreplaceable source of progress and prosperity… Except when it is about competition between States!

The Supreme Court holds, in a constant way and since many years, that the use of false documents infringement endures without any new use of the document by the author of this infringement as long as ...

The following text is published in "la libre Belgique", in the supplement "La libre entreprise" of the 13rd February 2010

The tax advanced ruling authorities handed down a decision (900.140) concerning the deduction of the expenses supported for MBA type studies.

More and more cash company cases are arriving at the judgment stage before the courts.

Since 1 January 2010, a new VAT regime is applicable to lawyers. Basically, the regime does not change a lot since it concerns only the trans-border aspects.

In the current undeclared incomes regularization procedure, the taxpayer who omitted to declare certain incomes in the past can regularize his situation by paying the tax normally due on these incom...

Last week, the German government declared they wanted to buy, for 2,5 million euros, a list of defrauders dissimulating some assets in Switzerland, which would have been pilfered at the HSBC bank. T...

Tattling is defined as "revelation but always in a bad sense" (Littre). Totalitarian regimes love it, and tax administrations as well.

The Belgian government established a list of tax havens, defined as being states with 'non-existent or low taxation”.

A law of January 18, 2010, published in the “Moniteur belge” of January 26, bogs down legal provisions against money laundering, dating from 1993, which have been strengthen many times sin...

As we know, tax evasion differs from licit tax avoidance: although the aim of a taxpayer decreasing the amount of tax that would otherwise be paid is reduce his tax liabilities, he only resorts to r...

Annually, the English journal “World Finance” draws up its list of the 100 “Most impressive firms” of the world.

In a previous article we mentioned the blow dealt by the decision of the Belgian Constitutional Court of the October 20, 2009 to article 356 of the Belgian Tax Code (“BTC”), the scope of...

We have already talked, in previous articles, about a major decision (Salduz-v-Turkey) delivered by the court of Human Rights in Strasbourg the 27 November 2008. This decision condemned Turkey becau...

We know that in the tax component of the KB Lux case, the tax authorities have nothing to be delighted about because almost all judgments pronounced by our Courts are favorable to taxpayers challeng...

Everyone knows that, for a decade, the tax authorities have contested, the phenomenon of “cash companies”.

The journal ACQLAW has published a supplement entitled "ACQLAW AWARDS 2009", containing, inter alia, interviews with people who obtained one of its awards in the year 2009.

From now on, everyone knows the benefit of the “tax deduction for equity capital” also known as a “deduction for notional interest”. The usual rate of the deduction for notio...

Under article 18, paragraph 1, 4 ,of the BTC, interests paid by a company, in return for advances made by a company manager or a shareholder are reclassified as dividends - subject to withho...

One of the government’s decisions, related to the budget, is allegedly to tax banks on all their deposits.

To hear many political statements, one would think that in our globalized society, to hold assets in a country other than ones own, would constitute an illegal act.

The debate over banking secrecy casts a shadow on other cruel realities for taxpayers.

Facing the potency of American justice, and in its offshore laws, Switzerland has partially bowed to demands from the United States.

According to the OECD, Belgium is no longer a tax haven for the simple reason that it concludes 12 tax information exchange agreements. These agreements include the possibility, for the foreign Stat...

In a previous issue of this journal, we had devoted a few lines to recent case law that considers, on the basis of provisions of international law that, between the taxpayer and the tax authorities,...