S. VIIPreface

The efforts to counter tax avoidance and tax abuse have increased significantly in recent years. The OECD’s project on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS), in particular, led to the addition of anti-abuse provisions to numerous domestic tax systems and double taxation treaties (DTTs). Alongside very broad and generally phrased rules (general anti-abuse rules [GAARs]), there are provisions that are more targeted (specific anti-abuse rules [SAARs]) with the aim of identifying and preventing abusive tax behaviour on the basis of objective criteria. In addition, countries and international organizations are increasingly relying on non-legally binding instruments. These developments have thus led to a patchwork of provisions in domestic as well as in international law whose interaction with each other is very intricate and remains under-researched. Many of these rules also pose complex challenges in relation to EU law and corresponding case law of the Court of Justice of the EU. With the Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive, the EU has established a legal basis that obligated Member States to incorporate numerous (general and specific) anti-abuse provisions into their domestic tax le...