Tax Treaty Case Law around the Globe 2025

1. Introduction

1.1. The Danish Benefit Ownership Cases

The Danish case presented at the 2025 conference is recorded as UfR 2024.5253H (SKM2025.530HR) and is the most recent Danish Supreme Court decision in a case that is one of those collectively referred to as the Danish Beneficial Ownership cases. The Eastern High Court and the Western High Court referred a request for a preliminary ruling to the CJEU for some of them.

The cases’ facts are similar and dealt with the question of whether Denmark could refuse an exemption from withholding tax in situations when intermediary holding companies resident in other EU Member States had received payments of dividends or interest made by subsidiary companies resident in Denmark. The Danish tax authorities did consider the recipient intermediary holding companies to be mere conduit companies that were not the beneficial owner of the dividends or interest payments since these were quickly transferred to a company resident in a tax haven and then finally to an ultimate parent resident in the United States. These beneficial ownership cases concern situations that took place at a time before Denmark had implemented the relevant provisions on abuse...