CJEU - Recent Developments in Direct Taxation 2025

1. Introduction

More than 30 years ago the European Court of Justice handed down its landmark decision Schumacker. After this decision, numerous other decisions have been delivered by the court on the question of whether the State of source rather than the taxpayer’s State of residence should consider the taxpayer’s personal and family circumstances. The decision led to what is known as the Schumacker doctrine. However, that does not mean that this doctrine has reached maturity. At least, according to the Dutch Hoge Raad (Supreme Court), several open questions still need to be answered. Therefore, it has asked preliminary questions in three very related cases: Reintkamp, Ottman and Bolring. These cases give the CJEU the opportunity to bring its Schumacker case law to full maturity, an opportunity that, in my view, the CJEU should not miss.

This chapter discusses these three pending cases, focussing on the following two research questions:

After setting a benchmark to answer the second question (section 2.), the c...