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Jesper Johansson
Intertax
Volume 49, Issue 11 (2021) pp. 948 – 955
https://doi.org/10.54648/taxi2021094
Abstract
This contribution examines the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) of 4 July 2018 in Case C-28/17 NN A/S concerning the compatibility of a Danish rule prohibiting double deductions of losses with the freedom of establishment in Article 49 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). In this case, the Court found the rule to be compatible with the freedom of establishment unless its application deprived the group of any effective possibility of deducting the loss in either of the two Member States involved. While this article finds merit in the Court’s reasoning, it also finds a few inadequacies mainly due to the Court disregarding differences in tax rates between Member States. Another finding is that, from a theoretical perspective, Denmark should not be required to allow the group to set off its loss considering the specific circumstances at hand in the underlying case. Furthermore, the judgment is presented as a potential trendsetter since it represents a development in the Court’s case law on rules preventing double deductions of losses, now handled in the Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive (ATAD).
Keywords
ATAD, NN A/S, CJEU, freedom of establishment, trendsetter.
Extract
This article explores some of the highlights of the United Handbook on Carbon Taxation that was produced by the Subcommittee on Environmental Taxation under the mandate of the United Nations (UN) Committee of Experts on International Cooperation in Tax Matters. The article analyses the existing international environmental agreements and the principles of international environmental law that provide the legal backdrop for the development of a carbon tax approach. It further considers the conceptual dimension of the terminology employed to frame carbon taxes. In doing so, the article points to three main conceptual lacunes in this field, specifically, the absence of international consensus on the definition currently used for carbon pricing, environmental taxation, and fossil fuel subsidies. At the same time, it highlights the breakthrough definition proposed by the committee for ‘carbon taxation’, the first of its kind, even if only for the purposes of the Handbook.
In addition to providing a thorough review of the main policy approaches introduced in the Handbook in forwarding a carbon tax, the article also explores forward-looking areas in which further work can be done. Such areas include the application of carbon taxation in niche markets such as aviation and maritime transport.