Tax case law of the court of justice of the European union | Edition 2014

For many years now, a prominent place in EU law has been
reserved for the case law of the European Court of Justice.
Although it did not take long after the Court of Justice's
inception for it to hand down its fi rst signifi cant judgments in
the fi eld of taxation, actual interest in this case law is of much
more recent date, mainly owing to the fact that the scope of
the judgments was fairly limited at fi rst. This situation has
undergone quite some changes in the past few years. Many
tax lawyers have come to realize the signifi cance of the (tax)
case law developed by the Court of Justice, not in the last
place because of the far-reaching impact some of the Luxembourg
decisions have had. Nonetheless, the huge number of
judgments rendered on tax issues, particularly in the last ten
years, has also caused many a person to lose track of the really
important decisions. Added to this is the fact that the judgments
are generally bulky and not always easy to fi nd or
consult.
These circumstances lay at the heart of our decision to condense
a number of relevant judgments to the format used in
this publication and to emphasize their vital characteristics.
The focus in this publication is on judgments in the fi eld of
direct taxation, but major European cases revolving around
social security disputes and judgments on general principles
and the formal aspects of EU law have not been forgotten.
Judgments on indirect taxation have been omitted.
We have also listed the tax matters currently pending before
the Court of Justice in this publication.
Peter Kavelaars is amongst the Netherlands' leading authors on a
variety of fi scal topics. Peter Kavelaars is head of the Tax Research
Department of Deloitte Tax Advisors in the Netherlands and is
professor of Economics of Taxation at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Jasper Korving is a staff member of the EU Tax Group/Tax Research
Department of Deloitte Tax Advisors in the Netherlands and a
member of the Tax Law Department of Radboud University Nijmegen