Tax case law of the court of justice of the european union | 2012

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 first significant judgments in the field 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 first. This situation has undergone quite some
changes in the past few years. Many tax lawyers have come
to realize the significance of the (tax) case law developed by
the Court of Justice, not in the last place because of the farreaching
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 find 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 field 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 fiscal 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.