Court practice on unmotivated tax benefits

A webinar themed “Court practice on unmotivated tax benefits” for readers of “Arbitrazhnaya Praktika (Arbitration Practice)” magazine was held on April 25, 2012. Advocate Maxim Rovinskiy, Head of tax and customs law practice of the Law Firm "YUST", spoke at the event.

In his speech, M.Rovinskiy explained the term of tax benefits, the significance of ascertaining the reality of economic operations for making court decisions in unmotivated tax benefit disputes, spoke on the concept of business purpose as a condition of acknowledging the tax benefit’s validity.

The Advocate paid special attention to how taxpayers should prove that they had employed due care and discretion during unmotivated tax benefit disputes. One of the examples of the ways to assess the business reputation of the taxpayer’s contractor is collection of information on him as a party to the transaction executed according to the results of tenders for public orders placement.

The webinar’s listeners were able to learn the details of distribution of the burden of proof during the disputes of this kind, the criteria of assessment of proof from the point of view of relevance and acceptability, as well as the courts’ approaches to the assessment of tax authorities’ arguments that the documents had been signed by non-authorized or unknown persons.