No Tax Hanky-Panky in EU Porn Site Move
(CN) - A Hungarian company's licensing of its erotic video chat site Livejasmin.com to a company in Portugal - where the tax rate is lower - was not illegal per se, the European Court of Justice said Thursday. In 2009, Hungary-based WebMindLicenses received the know-how to run the erotic video chat website Livejasmin from a Portuguese company, free of charge. That same day, WebMind agreed to give another Portuguese company, Lalib, the Livejasmin know-how it had just acquired. Hungarian tax authorities balked at the deal, believing WebMind intended to avoid Hungary's value-added tax by pretending to operate in Portugal where the VAT rate is lower. Specifically, the tax officials said the transfer of WebMind's know-how was not a genuine economic transaction and that the company was actually still running Livejasmin in Hungarian territory. Hungary ordered WebMind to pay over 21.1 billion Hungarian forints - about $72 million - in back taxes and fines. WebMind appealed to a Budapest administrative court, which asked the European [...]