Foreign dividends and the FII GLO case

Followers of the FII GLO case will know that more than 20 different points of law have been identified. When the taxpayers sought leave to appeal against the findings of the Court of Appeal the Supreme Court ordered that some of the outstanding issues would be heard by the Supreme Court and others would be referred back to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for a ruling on how EU law would apply. The AG’s opinion relates to these questions on EU law.

The core of the opinion relates to the UK’s pre-1999 treatment of dividends received by UK resident companies. Under that system dividends received from UK-resident companies were exempt while dividends received from...