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

For many years now, a prominent place in EU law has beenreserved for the case law of the European Court of Justice.Although it did not take long after the Court of Justice's inceptionfor it to hand down its first significant judgments in the field oftaxation, actual interest in this case law is of much more recentdate, mainly owing to the fact that the scope of the judgmentswas fairly limited at first. This situation has undergone quite somechanges in the past few years. Many tax lawyers have cometo realize the significance of the (tax) case law developed bythe Court of Justice, not in the last place because of the farreachingimpact some of the Luxembourg decisions have had.Nonetheless, the huge number of judgments rendered on taxissues,particularly in the last ten years, has also caused many a personto lose track of the really important decisions. Added to this is thefact that the judgments are generally bulky and not always easyto find or consult.These circumstances lay at the heart of our decision to condensea number of relevant judgments to the format used in thispublication and to emphasize their vital characteristics. The focusin this publication is on judgments in the field of direct taxation,but major European cases revolving around social securitydisputes and judgments on general principles and the formalaspects of EU law have not been forgotten. Judgments on indirecttaxation have been omitted.We have also listed the tax matters currently pending before theCourt of Justice in this publication.Peter Kavelaars is amongst the Netherlands' leading authors on a varietyof fiscal topics. Peter Kavelaars is head of the Tax Research Department ofDeloitte Tax Advisors in the Netherlands and is professor of Economics ofTaxation at Erasmus University Rotterdam.Jasper Korving is a staff member of the EU Tax Group/Tax ResearchDepartment of Deloitte Tax Advisors in the Netherlands and a member of theTax Law Department of Radboud University Nijmegen.