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Philippe Durand Fabien Cotte France is contemplating introducing new tax legislation concerning the tax treatment of partnerships. The French tax authorities have launched a consultation process to involve tax experts and are now waiting for their feedback.

Rajendra Nayak Ganesh Pai The Mumbai Income Tax Appellate Tribunal in the case of Ashapura Minichem [(2010) 5 taxmann.com 57 (Mum.-ITAT)] adjudicated on the issue of taxability of payments made by the taxpayer for services rendered outside India, under the provisions of the Indian Tax Law (ITL) as well as under the India-China tax treaty. The taxpayer, a company resident in India, engaged a Chinese company (China Co) to provide certain testing services in its laboratories and for preparing test reports which was used by the taxpayer to define its process parameters. The taxpayer relied on the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Ishikawajima Harima [(2004) 288 ITR 408], which held that for income in the nature of fees for technical services (FTS) to be taxable in India, the services should not only be 'utilised' in India but should also have been 'rendered' in India and contended that since the services were not rendered in India the same were not taxable. The issue before the tribunal was the taxability of the service fee under the ITL as well as under the treaty.

David Cuellar Cesar Acosta In line with the commitments addressed at the G20 summit (including its 2009 London summit) regarding the exchange of information in tax matters, the OECD and the Council of Europe have updated the Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters developed in 1988 through the execution of a revised protocol to the convention.

Burcu Canpolat Günes Avsar The need for a fertile flow of information between tax administration and taxpayers is vital for a well functioning fiscal system. The tax administration can utilise several different legal instruments for this purpose and an advance tax ruling system is one of those instruments. It is especially important if the tax system is based on a self-assessment system like Turkey.

Edward Tanenbaum Tola Ozim On April 6 2010, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) released an advance copy of Notice 2010-34, which provides guidance pursuant to the recently enacted Section 1298(f) concerning the annual reporting requirements of US persons who are shareholders of a passive foreign investment company (PFIC).

Suzanne Boers The Dutch Supreme Court has referred an important preliminary question to the European Court of Justice (ECJ), regarding the interpretation of the merger directive. On May 20 2010 the ECJ gave its decision on this issue.

Slobodan Mihajlovic Recent amendments in corporate taxation in Serbia were introduced on March 23 and came into force on March 27. The discrete revision and immediate implementation of the legislation is the outcome of the fact that this reform was pending for more than two years; the proposed amendments awaited the ratification by the parliament since fall 2007.

Rossitza Koleva Sophie Stylianou A wide range of double tax treaties have been concluded by Bulgaria in an attempt to strengthen the country's ties internationally and achieve a higher foreign direct investment rate in the country. Equally, existing treaties have been revised allowing for more attractive tax rates with respect to specific income deriving from either one of the participating states.

Sead Dado Salkovic The peculiarity of the approach of the Montenegrin authorities with regard to the treatment of loans between related companies and especially loans extended by a non-resident parent company to a Montenegrin subsidiary do limit the means available for intra group financing and/or injection of equity at the subsidiary's level in order to initiate its investment activities.

Sophie Stylianou Financial structuring and restructuring within a group has always been of utmost importance in the course of tax structuring. Financial transactions and corporate capitalisation matters have triggered the interest and consideration not only of investors and tax advisors, but also of the tax authorities globally. In the absence of uniform international guidelines and standards, every country adopts different measures seeking to mitigate abuse of law and financial transactions between related parties. Some countries apply thin capitalisation rules with strict debt-to-equity restrictions, others enforce preventive withholding taxes, and others adopt safe harbour rules.