Paris senior counsel Noël Chahid-Nouraï and partner Laurent Olléon, formerly members of the tax chambers of Conseil d'État, France's highest administrative court, authored an article in the prestigious French tax review Revue de Droit Fiscal on substance over form in French tax law. They discussed the impact of the Paris Administrative Court of Appeal's decision on December 20, 2018, which ruled that the French tax administration could accuse a taxpayer of committing an abuse of right by acting in a way approved by the administrative tax doctrine. Such a stand, which is debated among French tax specialists, is not indeed easy to reconcile with the case law of Conseil d'État and raises important issues related to the definition of abuse of right, the guarantee against tax doctrine changes and the necessity of legal certainty.
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