Random Law Review # 1

Phuon (Lily) Tran, Note, Cadbury Schweppes plc v. Commissioners of Inland Revenue: Eliminating a Harmful Tax Practice or Encouraging Multinationals to Shop Around the Bloc?, 30 Loy. L.A. Int'l & Comp. L. Rev. 2008

Whew! That's quite the mouthful for a title, and one not likely to entice the casual reader (if there is such a thing for law reviews). I can't blame the author, though, as the topic isn't one that easy to sum up (I've tried a few different ways, without much luck). Basically, this student note discusses a recent case decided by the European Court of Justice, which adjudicates disputes between member states of the European Union.* The UK wanted Cadbury's Ireland subsidiary to pay income taxes at the UK rate, whereas Cadbury naturally wanted its Ireland branch to pay the much lower (by 2/3) Irish income tax rate. The Court sided with Cadbury, holding that member states can't require that foreign-based subsidiaries pay higher domestic rates unless they can prove that that subsidary is basically a sham designed for tax evasion. The author is of the opinion that the decision is sound, but that the Court's rule is too difficult to apply in practice.

This is a perfect example of the drawbacks of publishing student casenotes in law journals: there's nothing you could get from this note that you couldn't get from simply reading the case itself. There's very little in the way of meaningful analysis in the casenote (so little I would give this a pretty low grade if it were a seminar paper), which means that any tax professional looking for insight on the EU's law in this regard would be wasting their time coming here first. Good legal scholarship requires a "value-added" element that is rarely present in casenotes.

*And to digress completely, how come whenever I put books on the European Union, bioethics, or Thomas Jefferson on my Christmas list, they never show up? (you people know who you are!) Are you worried I won't be as excited by them on Christmas morning as I am by a giant AT-AT Imperial Walker? You're probably right, but still.