Topics
ESG and sustainable investment, pillar one and pillar two, COVID-19, digital economy — your organisation continuously faces both interesting business opportunities and regulatory challenges. Rely on our experts for in-depth exploration of such topics.
To adapt international tax rules to an increasingly digitalised economy, the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework proposes a two-pillar overhaul of the existing system as from 2023/2024. Tax directors and their teams can already model the impact and assess opportunities for manageable restructurings to mitigate the increased complexity.
In recent years tax authorities have placed more emphasis on combatting the use of abusive and aggressive tax structures by companies operating across borders, to ensure fair taxation.
The European Commission recently issued a new proposal (ATAD 3). It is highly recommended that taxpayers assess the possible impact of the proposal and consider opportunities for strengthening their local footprint and/or restructuring.
Sustainability is becoming an increasingly important factor in the decisions of investors, companies, consumers, shareholders and policy- and lawmakers. The broadly supported awareness for the Environmental Social and Governance (‘ESG’) objectives is reflected in many international voluntary standards as well as in an increasing number of European regulations to mobilise financing for sustainable growth.
The implications of the COVID-19 pandemic reach across borders, industries, and legal disciplines. That is why Loyens & Loeff has set up dedicated expert teams - to offer you an integrated answer to all your legal and tax questions related to the coronavirus outbreak.
Digital transformation is all about using the latest technology to improve your business model. Digital technology creates new business opportunities which in turn creates a whole new range of tax and legal challenges such as contracting, data protection, privacy questions, intellectual property, consumer protection and competition issues.
ATAD2
The anti-hybrid mismatch rules of the EU Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive (ATAD2) aim to prevent situations of a double deduction and a deduction without a corresponding inclusion of the income at the level of the recipient resulting from a hybrid mismatch. All EU Member States have implemented ATAD2 in their domestic laws as from 1 January 2019 (for Belgium) or as from 1 January 2020 and 1 January 2022 (for a.o. the Netherlands and Luxembourg).
Corporate Investigations, Compliance & Defence
Recent developments, such as international treaties to combat (cross border) corruption, money laundering and the financing of terrorism and more sophisticated international cooperation between (tax) authorities are just a few examples of the growing number of laws and regulations that need to be complied with. Also, companies should take into account that they themselves can become a victim of fraud or a victim of breach of (internal) regulations.
Digital Economy Tax
Politically it is clear that both the EU and other jurisdictions wants to levy more tax from ‘digital companies’. Technically, the current international tax framework does not facilitate this. Fundamental changes seem to be required to achieve the political goals. This could affect both digital and non-digital companies.
Reform of property law
In the Book 3 "Goods" of the Civil Code the main goal of the legislator was to better structure, modernise and integrate the law on goods into a single code. Moreover, the new law on goods had to be functional, useful and flexible.