Sveriges CFC-reglering
En anpassning till EG-rätten
The Swedish CFC rules imply a taxation of Swedish partners of foreign legal persons subject to low income tax, which is based on a fictitious distribution. Thus, tax is levied even if the dividend has not been paid to the shareholder. The aim of the Swedish CFC legislation, which was put into force in 1990, was to prevent tax evasion and to protect the Swedish tax base. The reason was that the foreign exchange control was abolished, which made investments in foreign countries possible for Swedish companies. A CFC legislation was considered necessary for Sweden in order not to lose tax revenues.The legislation was strengthened on January 1st 2004 as a consequence of the abolished taxation of capital income of commercial shares. The most important change is that it is no longer possible to circumvent the rules by owning the CFC through a holding company in another country without CFC legislation.Due to Sweden?s membership of the EU, Swedish tax rules must comply with EC law. Some of the fundamental principles of the common market are the free movement of workers, capital and goods and the freedom of establishment. The thesis contains an analysis of whether the Swedish CFC legislation is in line with EC law or not, especially as regards the freedom of establishment and the free movement of capital. In the first part of the analysis we investigate if the legislation constitutes a restriction of the mentioned freedoms and in the second part there is an assessment of the possibilities to justify such a restriction. Our conclusion is that the CFC legislation does constitute an obstacle to the freedom of establish-ment as well as to the free movement of capital, and that it cannot be justified.We present a proposal of how the lacking compatibility with EC law could be remedied. The options are either to abolish the CFC legislation completely or to reduce the scope of it. Our suggestion is that the double CFC taxation is abolished, that the legislation is applied only to holdings of a certain magnitude and that CFC taxation is limited to incomes arisen from transactions between companies within the same concern.