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Mayer Brown will promote 21 of its staff to partner positions from January 1 2015, including three tax practitioners.

Alex Pham has joined Luxembourg-based law firm Kleyr Grasso as counsel, and will serve as head of tax in its newly-opened tax department.

Indian law firm Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan has confirmed that H Raghavendra Rao is joining the firm as the country head and leader of the direct tax practice. Rao spent nine years working for BMR Advisors as a legal senior advisor, following work at the Income Tax Department as a standing counsel before the Karnataka High Court.

On July 21 the OECD released the full version of the Standard for Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information in Tax Matters, which requires financial institutions to report detailed financial account information to their governments, which then exchange such information automatically with other jurisdictions on an annual basis. The Standard developed by the OECD in response to a mandate by the G20 was first presented to and endorsed by the G20 Finance Ministers in February 2014.

UK taxpayers have until March 2015 to eliminate employee benefit trusts (EBT) from their tax planning. However, the warning does not apply to every company that has used the technique, advisers say. A settlement initiative for employers who used Employee Benefit Trusts (EBT), as a tax avoidance vehicle will close in seven months’ time, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has announced.

At last week’s informal ECOFIN meeting in Milan, European finance ministers discussed the future of the EU financial transaction tax (FTT), but are still reluctant to divulge any substantial information about the controversial proposal.

New tax law amendments in Austria are set to take effect from October 1. The amendments will mean taxpayers have more options to correct instances of negligence without criminal proceedings.

Phase II of the Appeals Judicial Approach and Culture (AJAC) project in the US provides that the Appeals division of the Internal Revenue Service will not accept new cases unless there is at least 365 days remaining on the statute of limitations, but this may lead to more cases heading for litigation.

With the introduction of the goods and services tax (GST) from April 2015, the Malaysian Customs Department has released its GST handbook to help prepare businesses for the new tax, but time is running out.

Both formerly of Gray’s Inn Tax Chambers, Aparna Nathan and Marika Lemos have joined the tax group at Devereux Chambers.