Luxembourg: Taxation of Flight Personnel in Triangular Situations and Article 15(3) of the OECD Model

The case discussed in this note concerns an issue arising before the Cour administrative on the taxation of flight personnel of a Belgian airline. The individuals resided in Belgium, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, respectively, and where employed by a company in Luxembourg. Although the substantive issue discussed in the judgment is quite straightforward, interesting procedural questions arise from the rather unusual circumstance that the case was not brought to the courts by the former managing director of the company, who had been charged for the unremitted withholding tax under a joint liability rule. One of the crucial questions the court had to address in its judgment was whether the managing director could (still) rely on the limitation of tax jurisdiction following from the tax treaty.