Anti-Abuse Rules in International Tax Law and their Interactions
1. Aufl. 2025
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1. Introduction
In February 2019, the Court of Justice of the European Union (Grand Chamber) (hereafter referred to as “ECJ” or “the Court”) delivered judgments in six Danish cases (hereafter referred to as “the Danish Cases”) concerning the exemption from the withholding tax on cross-border payments of interest and dividends that were granted to European Union (EU) Member States by the Parent-Subsidiary Directive (90/435/EEC) and the Interest and Royalties Directive (2003/49/EC).
The Danish tax authorities denied the said withholding tax exemption for the Danish companies involved on the grounds that the beneficial owner of the dividends and interest payments was not the actual recipient.
The referred companies therefore acted as “conduit companies” whose sole function was to channel income from Denmark to third countries with the main purpose of obtaining the tax advantage contained in the directives.
S. 400For the purpose of this chapter, some of the notable results from these judgments are:
the proclamation in direct taxation of the existence of a “general anti-abuse principle that the EU cannot rely on fraudulent transactions”,
the Court’s confirmation that the anti-abuse principle applie...