Giuliana Polacco

I am an international tax lawyer, focusing on tax disputes, with almost 30 years of experience working for multinational groups.

I focus on tax disputes covering a wide range of matters, including corporate income tax, withholding taxes, VAT and custom duties. I assist clients in all phases of tax disputes, including the preparation for tax audits, support during tax audits, assistance during the entire litigation phase. This includes criminal tax law aspects, pleading before the Supreme Court and the European Court of Justice, the negotiation of Advance Pricing Agreements with the Revenue Agency or the filing of Mutual Agreement Procedures.

My main areas are the permanent establishment and transfer pricing audits, disallowment of management fees in intragroup transactions and European VAT law interpretation.

My clients work in the digital, high tech, hardware and software industry, fashion, travel, chemical and pharmaceutical sectors.

• Advising on tax audits, negotiations with the tax authorities for major US Internet companies in the context of permanent establishment cases (initial adjustments higher than Euro 500m) with criminal ramifications.
• Advising on tax audits and negotiations with the tax authorities for several companies in different sectors (software, hardware, fashion, banking, energy, consumer products) in the context of permanent establishment cases with criminal ramifications. The average value of the adjustment was higher than 100 million.
• Advising on tax audits, negotiations with the tax authorities and tax litigation for several companies in different sectors (chemicals, agricultural, fashion, software) in transfer pricing cases, involving competent authorities.
• Advising on tax litigation regarding withholding tax assessments for major US companies (focused on the beneficial owner principles).
• Advising on several cases with VAT implications (VAT frauds, denial of refunds) with European law ramifications, which brought two cases before the European Court of Justice (EGN and Federal Express).
• Assistance with several APAs for major companies.
• Co-author of dozens of client alerts on tax litigation, VAT and transfer pricing.
• Participated as speaker in a number of seminars organised in Europe (ITR Transfer pricing Seminar; Bloomberg BNA in Paris and in the US (the most important is the TEI Seminar on Tax Controversies).
• Published articles on several topics in English and Italian and contributed to the draft of the Commentary to Tax Litigation (Commentario al Contenzioso Tributario edito da Maggioli).