ABA Tax Section May Meeting — Teaching Tax Panel: Government Speakers Will Debate EU-US Controversy Over State Aid (Friday, May 6, 3:00 pm)

By: Diane Ring

It’s already time for the May Meeting of the ABA Tax Section, in DC. and I wanted to highlight the session organized by the Teaching Tax Committee – it should prove to be immensely interesting.

As those who follow international tax know, there has been a been a controversy brewing between the U.S. and the EU regarding European Commission investigations into whether tax rulings that certain multinationals (most of which are U.S. corporations) received from EU member states constitute forbidden state aid. The U.S. has expressed concern that the investigations inappropriately target U.S. businesses, while the EU considers the inquiry a legitimate look at important tax rulings.

The panel discussion this Friday at 3:00pm will include the following government officials: Bob Stack, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary, International Affairs; Gert-Jan Koopman, Deputy Director-General State Aid, Directorate-General for Competition, European Commission; and Pierpaolo Rossi-Maccanico, European Commission.

I will be blogging about the panel later – but even better than reading about it will be attending and then reading the blog post!

For more information:

ABA Tax Section May Meeting, Washington DC

Friday May 6, 2016
3:00PM – 6:00PM
Teaching Taxation

3:00pm EU State Aid Investigations: Perspectives from both Sides of the Atlantic. Over the past few years the European Commission vigorously investigated whether certain advance tax rulings – granted by various EU member states – conferred forbidden state aid to multinational taxpayers. US legislators from both sides of the aisle, as well as US tax administrators, expressed concern that the Commission’s investigations disproportionately target US-based enterprises, and a bipartisan letter from the United States Senate asked the Department of Treasury to consider whether these investigations implicated section 891 of the Code, which can lead to the imposition of a double rate of tax on citizens and corporations of foreign countries engaging in discrimination against corporations of the United States. This panel will discuss the following questions: (1) Can the US intervene in legal proceedings in the EU? (2) Should the US intervene in, or otherwise respond to the EU state aid investigations? What are the considerations at play? and, (3) What legal instruments does the US have at its disposal, assuming a response is warranted?

Moderator: Professor Omri Marian, University of California, Irvine School of Law, Irvine, CA
Panelists: Professor Werner Haslehner, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg; Pierpaolo Rossi-Maccanico, European Commission, Brussels, Belgium; Gert-Jan Koopman, Deputy Director-General State Aid, Directorate-General for Competition, European Commission, Brussels, Belgium; Robert Stack, Deputy Assistant Secretary, International Tax Affairs (Tax Policy), Department of Treasury, Washington, DC; Professor Itai Grinberg, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, DC
Co-Sponsored by: Foreign Lawyers Forum