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The Portuguese budget bill for 2018 was presented to the Parliament on October 13 2017 and the main salient feature would be an uncharacteristic lack of any major tax amendments.

The recent High Court decision of Pienaar Brothers (Pty) Ltd v Commissioner for the South African Revenue, a highly important judgment dealing with the constitutionality of retrospective legislation, underscores the importance for taxpayers of participating in or at least being aware of the public consultation process around proposed tax amendments in order to be forewarned of pending changes.

Acquisition of Polish companies used to be structured via an acquiring Polish entity (limited liability company or a joint stock company) which was debt financed. Both before and after the merger of the acquisition and the target the interest on debt was tax deductible. It was limited with debt to equity thin capitalisation that applied only to selected related party debt. Interest on non-related party debt (bank loans) was fully tax deductible.

In August 2017, the Trusts Bill was introduced in New Zealand's Parliament. The bill seeks to restate and reform New Zealand's trust law and is the first significant change in New Zealand's trust law in more than 60 years.

In order to provide legal and tax treaty certainty, such a concept should be included and described in legislation because, the mere use of it has a clear negative impact on such resolutions.

The budget for the 2018 legislature was presented to the Maltese Parliament on October 9 2017. The main theme of the budget, from a commercial perspective, was the creation of business, the incentivisation of the markets and the attraction of foreign direct investment. At the core of the budget document were a number of interesting fiscal measures and incentives for both businesses and households.

On September 27, Turkish Finance Minister Naci Ağbal announced a comprehensive package including tax increases in a meeting held for the medium-term programme of 2018-2020. Draft legislation including the tax issues that have already been sent to the Turkish Grand National Assembly for the enactment process.

The Swiss population rejected the 2020 Old-Age and Survivors Insurance reform on September 24 2017. As a result, the additional funding of disability insurance (DI) by 0.4 points of VAT will expire at the end of 2017. However, the standard and special VAT rates will increase by 0.1 point from January 1 2018 due to the draft measures to finance and develop railway infrastructure.

Montenegro has recently sharpened its focus on fiscal consolidation with a target to achieve budget surplus and to establish a declining trend in the level of public debt from 2019. On the revenue side, additional measures will be aimed at further harmonising the excise policy with the EU's rules. Additionally, the government is set to increase the standard VAT rate by two percentage points as of 2018, an adjustment which will not disturb the Montenegrin tax system.

The European Commission (EC) has opened a state aid investigation into the UK’s tax laws, which it says exempt multinationals with certain types of subsidiaries in tax havens from controlled foreign company (CFC) rules.