In a preliminary ruling of 20 December 2017 (case C-529/16) the European Court of Justice decided on a customs issue caused by a price adjustment for transfer pricing and corporate income purposes.

On 28 March 2018 a summary of a decision of the Eastern High Court in a transfer pricing case involving Microsoft Denmark was published. The cases addresses two interesting points as discussed below.

On 27 December 2016 Luxembourg issued a new circular on intra-group finance. This circular – LIR No. 56/1–56bis/1 – replaced the 2011 circular on intra-group finance and introduced a significantly changed transfer pricing regime for intra-group financing arrangements.

On Monday (6th June, 2016), the European Commission published the non-confidential version of its decision to open a State-Aid investigation into the Luxembourg tax arrangements of McDonald’s.

On 28 April 2016 Denmark published a new transfer pricing documentation order that specifies the transfer pricing documentation requirements under Section 3 B of the Tax Control Act.

On 23 December 2015 new transfer pricing documentation requirements based on the OECD BEPS standards were enacted as Articles 29b-29b of the Dutch Corporate Income Tax Act.

The first time someone mentioned BEPS to me (several years ago now), I thought it was a reference to a new party drug. The comment "everyone is doing BEPS now" dropped into an otherwise social lunch with a young guy at the very start of his tax career, who was, to coin a phrase, a bit of a "party boy".

In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Pierre Gramegna, finance minister of Luxembourg, rejected the European Commission’s criticism vis-à-vis the state aid cases, saying the commission’s approach was problematic.

In October 2015 the OECD released new transfer pricing guidance under the BEPS project. The revised OECD guidance and the refocus of the functional analysis on e.g. decision making, control over risks and financial capacity to assume risks are important to the real estate industry.