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In anticipation of the launch of International Tax Review's Financial Services Tax website, the annual publication on Capital Markets tax developments has been repositioned to also cover banking, asset and wealth management, private equity and fund management from a tax perspective.

Arun Jaitley, the Indian finance minister, has delegated responsibility for oversight of the Indian tax disputes involving Vodafone because he advised the company on tax issues during his legal career.

Khoonming Ho

Durval Portela

Bob van der Made On April 14 2014, the Council's High Level Working Party (HLWP) meeting discussed a Greek Council Presidency proposal for a split approach to the revision of the parent-subsidiary directive (2011/96/EU), which was proposed by the European Commission at the end of 2013. Under the proposed split, the PPLs/hybrid loans part of the proposed revised parent-subsidiary directive (PSD) would still be adopted in Council under the six-monthly rotating Greek EU Presidency, that is before June 30 2014. The relevant new Article 4(1)(a) of the PSD provides that where a parent company, by virtue of its association with its subsidiary, receives distributed profits, the member state of the parent company shall refrain from taxing such profits to the extent that such profits are not deductible by the subsidiary of the parent company. The PPLs/hybrids proposal follows the political guidance agreed in 2009 within the EU's Code of Conduct Group on business taxation and allows this political guidance to be implemented in domestic tax law. The agreed deadline for transposing changes to the PSD into the domestic legislation of all 28 member states is most probably December 31 2015.

Rajendra Nayak

Donka Pechilkova The Bulgarian National Revenue Agency published an official opinion regarding the VAT Act, and more specifically related to the part concerning the reinvoicing of expenses, when they are not part of explicit obligations, related to major transactions between two VAT registered companies. This action is a step towards unifying the local Bulgarian legislation with the standards applicable in the EU. Reinvoicing done by one company (receiver of the service) to another legal entity (the real beneficiary of that service) is a sensitive topic in Bulgaria. The reason for the sensitivity is the grounds of the service-receiving company to reinvoice to another company. A very common situation in the existing business practice is one company to reinvoice services like electricity, water supply, and mobile telephones to another VAT registered company. Tax officers are recently refusing to recognise the accrued VAT from such transactions for the real beneficiary of the service, treating the company as an end consumer, with the argument being the function and the character of VAT as an indirect, multi-phase tax. This results in the economic burden being undertaken by the end users. Additionally, the tax officers treat the receiving company to not be the real provider of the service. As these standpoints contradict with the operating EU rules, according to the official new opinion of the Bulgarian tax authorities, published February 2014, such transactions that assure the operating economic activity of the real beneficiary of the reinvoiced service are fully acceptable. They even go further based on a decision of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) by case C-25/03, according to which in such cases the reinvoicing is not only possible, but is recommendable. It must be noted that reinvoicing could be applicable only if the participants in the transaction do not alter the tax base, tax event, or place of delivery. In that sense, the VAT accrued to a foreign EU entity will not be recognised by the Bulgarian National Revenue Agency as the place of delivery would have been altered. Fully in accordance with the decisions of the ECJ there is one more specific item, concerning zero VAT rates of deliveries to entities that possess documentation allowing them enjoying such preferential rates – these prefix rates are applicable only for these companies and cannot be reinvoiced to other companies with such prefix rate.

Ayesha Lau

Erion Lena The reimbursement of VAT has been a known concern for businesses in Albania. Many Albanian companies have a considerable amount of refundable VAT still un-reimbursed by the tax offices. The Ministry of Finance with Directive no.6 dated February 27 2014 (published in Official Gazette No. 27 dated March 10 2014) aimed at giving a solution to this problem and eliminating delays in the VAT reimbursement which lead to financial problems for the companies and the economic environment in general. Thus, the Ministry of Finance has amended the existing rules stipulating that "VAT reimbursement shall be performed directly by the Treasury system of the Ministry of Finance, a task which until now was performed by the tax authorities".

John Leopardi