Non-Discrimination in European and Tax Treaty Law

I. S. 2Introduction

Non-discrimination plays an important, if not crucial, role in many areas of law, such as constitutional law, human rights law, world trade law, EU law as well as tax treaty law. Both direct and indirect taxation are affected by the various types of non-discrimination provisions. From a practical point of view, the non-discrimination provisions within the EU legal framework and the non-discrimination concept under Article 24 of the OECD Model are important examples in this respect. In both areas of non-discrimination law, there are many open issues which have been debated for a long time; these issues have become the evergreens of non-discrimination in the area of taxation, examples being the meaning of the ECJ’s case law on the “finality” of losses or the compatibility of group regimes with Article 24 of the OECD Model. Other problems have emerged only recently because of current developments at the OECD level, notably the BEPS project. Therefore, non-discrimination suggested itself as a general topic for the Master‘s theses of the full-time LL.M. program in 2014/2015.

The aim of this book is to focus on and deal with selected issues in depth. For that purpose and as...