The EU formally adopted a Council Directive, the so called Anti Tax Avoidance Directive, which lays down rules against tax avoidance practices that directly affect the functioning of the internal market.

By transposing the OECD’s recommendations made in the BEPS project into a legally binding instrument the EU goes further than the OECD approach. The Directive introduces legally binding provisions, without prejudice to provisions allowing for higher levels of protections for the domestic corporate tax base, addressing, in particular, five key areas of (international) direct taxa­tion:  interest limitation rules, exit taxation rules, general anti-abuse rule (GAAR), controlled foreign company (CFC) rules, rules on hybrid mismatches. These will have an impact on not only the domestic law, that will need, in part, to be accordingly amended, but also the international tax landscape.