The Tax Law department participates in the institutes programme that focuses on financial, business and tax law, specifically in collaboration with lawyers and financial service providers based at the Amsterdam Zuidas business hub. The aim is to achieve cross-fertilization between the university’s theoretical insights and the experience and needs of professional practice. The departments researchers have backgrounds in international and Dutch tax law and often combine their research activities with working in practice as tax lawyer, tax judge or tax inspector.

The research focuses particularly on complex, but specific fiscal dilemmas related to business activities directly linked to practice. It is therefore clearly of interest both to the business sector and to parties such as legislators and many government bodies, as well as the judiciary and professional practitioners. Currently, PhD research is performed on the following topics:

• The European Merger Directive
• The influence of The Council of State (Raad van State) on Dutch tax legislation
• VAT and the financing of business activities through equity and debt
• Territorial limits on the application of EU law
• The residence of non-individuals under the OECD Model Tax Convention
• The definition of Permanent Establishment in Article 5 of the OECD Model Tax Covention and the influence of E-commerce
• Tax aspects of Bilateral Investment Treaties
• Temporal issues relating to tax conventions
• VAT aspects of securitization
• The other income article of the OECD Model Tax Convention (Art. 21)
• Tax impediments as an obstacle to the internal market for occupational retirement provisions
• he role of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights for tax proceedings

The Tax Law department is also part of the Free University’s Zuidas Institute for Financial and Company Law (ZIFO). Click here for more information.