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A proposed Greek 26% transaction tax, which has caused concern and uncertainty for businesses in Bulgaria, Cyprus and Ireland, is being scrutinised by the European Commission (EC), which will convene a meeting with the parties concerned and provide its opinion on August 18.

The official launch of the Tax Inspectors Without Borders (TIWB) programme has come at a time when tax collection could not have a higher profile as a means of helping developing countries generate their own resources rather than rely solely on aid from richer countries.

Bob van der Made On June 17 2015, the European Commission (EC) presented an action plan setting out a new approach to business taxation, to meet the goal of fairer and more efficient taxation and to effectively tackle corporate tax avoidance. The stated objectives are: Re-establishing the link between taxation and where economic activity takes place; Ensuring that member states can correctly value corporate activity in their jurisdiction; Creating a competitive and growth-friendly corporate tax environment for the EU; and Protecting the Single Market and securing a strong EU approach to corporate tax issues, including on implementing OECD BEPS actions, dealing with non-cooperative tax jurisdictions and increasing tax transparency. A new legislative proposal for mandatory (at least for MNEs) common consolidated corporate tax base (CCCTB) will be presented in 2016. Implementation in two stages: first a common tax base (CCTB), with consolidation to follow at a later stage. If unanimity is not achieved, it is possible that a CCTB could proceed for selected member states under enhanced cooperation.

Mark Galea Salomone

Bartosz Bogdanski July 1 2015 saw another amendment to the Polish VAT law. This time the amendments are not of crucial nature and were aimed at sealing the tax system and preventing fiscal frauds. Moreover, due to extinction of the temporal period agreed with the European Commission, the Polish government had to partially resign from the restrictions on the VAT deduction from fuel purchases to passenger cars. From the Polish government's perspective, the first part of the modifications seem to be the most important. It is well known that VAT frauds became a serious problem for the Polish state budget and a prevention of 'carousel fraud' is one of the priorities of fiscal policy. The most effective solution seems to be a broadening of the scope of the reverse charge mechanism for local supplies, which eliminates the mechanism of VAT input/output credits which is vulnerable to fraud. Starting from July 1 2015, supplies of portable computers (tablets, notebooks, laptops, mobile phones, including smartphones and video games consoles) shall be subject to the reverse charge mechanism if supplies are carried out to VAT registered taxpayers. The important issue is that the above mentioned goods will be subject to the reverse charge mechanism only if the total net amount of goods within the so called "economically uniform transaction" exceeded 20,000 PLN ($5,000).

Sandra Benedetto

Ilarion Lemetyuynen

Jacques Kistler

Chris Neil The Australian federal Budget was handed down last month. Of the announced Budget measures, the Bills relating to reducing the tax rate of small business entities from 30% to 28.5% and increasing the threshold for immediate asset deductions to $20,000 have received royal assent. As a part of the federal Budget, the government also announced that it will be extending Australia's GST (value added tax) regime to inbound supplies of intangibles. The reforms, which have been cited in media reports as the 'Netflix Tax', are expected to apply to digital content and software (including apps), online subscription services (including cloud based services and pay-TV services) and other intangible supplies made by non-residents from outside of Australia. If enacted, the reforms will apply from July 1 2017. Note that the reforms will only apply to supplies made to consumers. The reforms will not impact intangible supplies made to GST registered businesses in Australia.

Andrés Edelstein