LL.M. Programmes

The International and European Tax Moot Court is a simulated hearing before a tax tribunal. The competition consists of a written and an oral stage. Students first submit their memorials with their core arguments for both claimant and respondent with respect to a problem of international and European tax law. The best memorials qualify and are invited to subsequently present their arguments in oral proceedings.

The International and European Tax Moot Court is organised by KU Leuven, Belgium. This moot court is of particular interest for students in the Master in European and International Tax Law (LL.M.).

News

The Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance is this year participating in the International and European Tax Law moot courts. Our team coached by Antonio ANCORA and Natalia Vorobyeva visited the IBFD library in Amsterdam last November.  This research period is part of the Tax Moot Court training, which aims to prepare the students to write and to plead in a moot case scenario.

The team

Daniel Ask (Sweden), Daniel Rolim Albuquerque (Brazil), Jean-Raphael Jullien (France), Lazaridou Eleni-Lydia (Greace), Thomas Wurtz (France) , Parvana Maharramova (Azerbaijan) students in the Master in European and International Tax Law (LL.M.)

The coaches

Antonio ANCORA (doctoral candidate under the supervision of Prof Aikaterini Pantanzatou)
Natalia Vorobyeva (doctoral candidate under the supervision of Prof Werner Haslehner)

Their journey

27 to 30 November 2019 – Research visit of the IBFD Library, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
12 January 2020 – Memorial submission deadline
15 to 20 March 2020 – Finals in Leuven, Belgium

The case

The 2018-2019 Tax Moot Court case confronted the students with a complex qualification of payments from companies based in three different countries. The case addressed a number of issues such as double tax residence, place of effective management, domestic and treaty based anti-abuse rules, qualification of payments as royalties, technical services or dividends as well as the determination of permanent establishments and the beneficial owner status.

The previous Final

At the Finals hosted at KU Leuven, Belgium, the Uni.lu team faced opponents from Uni Catholique de Louvain la Neuve and University of Warsw, taking on the role of applicant and defendant. The team was particularly strong in its well-founded legal research reflected in its memoranda and oral pleadings. For the first time in the University’s history, our students went to the semi-finals and pleaded against Virginia (The winner of the competition) and University of Heidelberg. They finished ranking 5^th  overall, the best result since the beginning of the competition. Moreover, the defendant memoranda was ranked second best overall.

Past performance highlights:

• 2018-2019: Team placed 5 ^th   worldwide (best position in the history of the University)

Testimonials:

The Tax Moot Court experience was invaluable to me. The process of writing a memorandum gave us the opportunity to apply the knowledge that we already had, while also teaching us how to research specific tax doctrine in a practical way. The experience of practicing and pleading in a formal setting was a fun way to improve on everyday skills like speaking with good diction, convincingness and confidence. However, to me the teamwork was the most important aspect of participating in this moot court. Working with my team-members and coach taught me to view things form different angels, to apply patience and listening skills and how to combine everyone’s strengths to come to the best result. I am very thankful that we were given the opportunity to participate.
- Heleen Klep

The training and preparatory meetings for this moot court were hard work but, in the end, we saw that it was worth it. The feeling to finally plead our case before the jury was incredible. In a moot court, students have the opportunity to learn a lot – things that you will never learn in the same way in class. We were trained to work in a team, we learned a lot on written and oral pleading skills and of course on the substantive topics of European and international tax law.

- Julia Hamm (2014-2015)