Hans van den Hurk is an international tax litigator with extensive experience in domestic, bilateral and multilateral international tax controversies. He has run and is running several cases before Dutch courts and the European Court of Justice and supervised many foreign court cases for multinationals, Big Four and other law firms.

Experience

Hans started his career as a lecturer at the Catholic University Brabant (now: Tilburg University). He was an international tax partner at Andersen and then Deloitte, before co-founding the tax boutiques Cygnus (now: HHP Chambers) in 2014 and Apertas (2017) which is a training institute for international taxation. In addition to this, he is a founding partner of the tax dispute litigation boutique Herreveld & Van den Hurk.

His day-to-day litigation work deals mainly with post-BEPS international tax law, focusing on transfer pricing, permanent establishments, and abuse (often in relation to withholding taxes).  Hans can provide technical support in these fields. He can help strengthen existing strategies and argumentation in different dispute scenarios. He can also provide opinions and second opinions on issues relating to international and EU tax issues, including VAT. Hans is knowledgeable about international and domestic tax policy debates, which makes him an excellent sparring partner for companies and for tax authorities.

Academic

Since 2005 Hans is a full university professor (on a parttime basis) at Maastricht University. He teaches courses on corporate income tax, international and EU taxation, and tax policy. He has supervised many PhD theses. He frequently speaks and publishes on new international tax issues around the globe. Some of his contributions have been translated into Spanish, Italian, Chinese and Japanese.

Expertise

International tax law

• Litigation about international business restructuring and cross-border profit allocation
• Existence of a permanent establishment
• Beneficial owner disputes under OECD and UN model tax conventions
• Anti-abuse legislation and withholding taxes contravening tax treaties

EU tax law

• Cross border loss compensation cases
• Business restructurings and capital tax issues
• Anti-abuse legislation and withholding taxes contravening primary EU law or EU directives
• Restrictions on interest deduction contravening primary EU law or EU directives
• State Aid and recovery issues

Bilateral investment treaties

• Arbitration dealing with ‘fair and equitable treatment’
• Arbitration involving a British company against India

Affiliations

• Dutch Association of Tax Advisors (Nederlandse Orde van Belastingadviseurs)
• Dutch Association for Tax Scholarship (Vereniging voor Belastingwetenschap)
• International Fiscal Association (IFA)
• International Law Association (ILA)

Key publications

• Is het interaction between Chapter X of the OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines and the EU Directive on Tax Dispute Resolution Mechanisms an Effective One?, 2022 (article in journal).
• Tax Treaties and Abuse: The Effectiveness of the Principal Purpose Test and Some of Its Shortcomings, 2021 (article in journal).
• Tax and the Digital Economy – Will Pillar One Be The Solution?, 2020 (article in journal)

Please contact Hans van den Hurk if you have any questions or would like to receive a copy of any of the publications.