CJEU – Recent Developments in Direct Taxation 2019

1. S. 52Introduction

As in previous years, the CJEU has dealt with several Belgian direct tax cases. This Belgian chapter aims firstly to give a short update on two cases discussed in last year’s edition, but which were still pending at the time^, (Sections II and III). Thereafter the authors selected a few cases, one being a sequel to a prior corporate income tax case (Section IV), one an inheritance matter in line with prior well-established precedents such as among others the Persche case (Section V) and another a matter relating more to a social security issue (Section VI). Finally, the chapter ends with a peculiar case pertaining to the interpretation of the Charter, but where the analysis of the CJEU is limited to the admissibility of the request for a preliminary ruling (Section VII).

2. Jacob and Lennertz (C-174/18)

2.1. Facts and legal background

The Court of first instance of Liège validly referred the Jacob and Lennertz case to the CJEU on 5 March 2018 and the CJEU issued its ruling on 14 March 2019.

In a nutshell, the couple Jacob and Lennertz are Belgian tax residents who filed their 2014 joint tax return with the inclusion of, among other things, their pension income, while part...