The Controlled Foreign Company Regime

The Controlled Foreign Company (CFC) regime proposed by the Commission as part of the newly launched Common Corporate Tax Base (CCTB) project reflects the perceived need to strengthen the Union’s anti-tax avoidance measures, and specifically to discourage profit shifting to low-tax jurisdictions. The proposed rule largely reflects previous work done by the OECD as part of the BEPS project and the EU implementation measures in the Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive (ATAD), but it deviates from both in a number of its details. This contribution aims to provide a first technical analysis of the provision to reveal its scope, its mechanism, and apparent shortcomings. It furthermore tries to imbed it in its context of existing primary and secondary EU law.