The EU and WTO legal regimes on state aid and subsides may contribute to the EU and OECD objective of tackling harmful tax competition. In EU Member States relations with third countries, harmful tax competition may arise both in relation to tax derogations by EU Member States applied to activities linked with third countries, and in relation to tax derogations by non-EU countries potentially affecting the Policy Decisions of the EU Member States or Decisions about the location of multinational businesses. In order to illustrate some of these problems, this article addresses two recent Decisions by the EU Commission and the EFTA Surveillance Authority regarding derogations from general rules on tax amortization and corporate taxation potentially involving fiscal aid and/or harmful tax competition.
Intertax