The ADVOC Tax Practice Group held their first seminar on 31 January and 1 February 2014 at the hotel Savigny in Frankfurt in Germany.

A total of 12 colleagues from eight ADVOC member law firms and eight countries and also one colleague from Ernst & Young met on Friday evening for the reception and dinner at the hotel restaurant. At dinner, the first contacts were made and first professional talks were had. After a good meal, the participants met for a pint of Guinness in the nearby Irish Pub.

On Saturday morning, the participants heard about inheritance tax in France, Denmark, Great Britain, Poland, Norway and Germany. In each case, a colleague introduced the inheritance tax law of his country. The differences between the systems and also similarities were pointed out in the discussion of the participants.
The participants also learned from colleague Enrique Sibauste that Europeans may well settle in Panama and invest there.
The main lecture was given by Dr. Christian Reiter, Ernst & Young (Munich, Germany) on the “International Inheritance Tax Planning”. Based on three case studies he presented the effects of different inheritance tax rules of different countries and made it clear that proactive estate planning is strongly advised if the deceased has distributed his assets in different countries of the world.
After lunch the EU-Inheritance Regulation and the EU-Commission Recommendation regarding relief for double taxation of inheritances were presented and discussed.

After this successful seminar, the participants returned home with lots of new information on international inheritance tax law.

At the ADVOC -AGM in Zagreb at the end of May 2014 the tax practice group will meet again and plan the next seminar.