According to claims made by the Finnish Tax Administration, withholding tax should have been levied on dividends received in relation to certain equity securities, as paid Finland outbound. This is now being disputed.
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What made this case particularly challenging from the advisory perspective was the need to assess both the contractual positions of the parties engaged from the civil law litigation perspective and the specific tax issues underlying the assessment, as these two perspectives, more or less, interweave with each other.
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In essence, the case is ground-breaking in addressing the Finnish withholding tax legislation and related obligations, and assessing the concept of beneficial ownership for Finnish taxation purposes.
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The claims made by the Finnish Tax Administration are of a kind rarely pleaded in Finnish tax practice or in case law by the courts of Finland. Certain details of the underlying basis of the case makes it unique also in Finnish civil law litigation.
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As this case was effectively a consequence of the authorities in various jurisdictions aggressively investigating through information exchange numerous claimed cum-ex / cum-cum transactions.
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As this case, and numerous other similar cases pending across jurisdictions, are effectively a consequence of the authorities in various jurisdictions aggressively investigating through information exchange numerous claimed cum-ex / cum-cum transactions, we will have the final decisions at hand regarding these only in the years to come.