Brussels, 23/09/2013 (Agence Europe) - Ensuring respect of EU data protection rules, instructing the European Commission to be the sole negotiator for future automatic exchange of bank information (AEI) for tax purposes with non-EU countries, ensuring tax offices have the resources they need to efficiently implement AEI and introducing legislation to deter non-cooperative bodies from breaking the rules. These are the main messages in a report by Romanian socialist MEP George Sabin Cutas on draft European Commission legislation to expand the scope of AEI between member states' tax offices (see EUROPE 10865). The report was unveiled to the European Parliament's economic and monetary affairs committee on Tuesday 24 September.
The rapporteur says the proposal unveiled by the Commission on 12 June to update the directive on administrative cooperation for tax purposes by extending AEI in 2015 to dividends, capital gains and all other forms of financial income and bank balances should, along with the savings tax directive, enable the member states to have the same exchange of information with each other as they have with the United States under the FATCA rules. This would put the European Union at the forefront of the fight against tax fraud and tax evasion and the move to extend AEI around the world, as recommended by the G8, G20 and OECD.
The rapporteur says that AEI must scrupulously respect current EU privacy and data protection rules and he requests a number of clarifications about the draft rules in order to ensure any information exchanged cannot be wrongly accessed by third parties or non-EU countries. He recommends a coherent, systematic and over-arching approach to cut costs and be usefully promoted internationally by the EU. To this end, he asks for the Commission to be given a negotiating mandate as soon as the new directive comes into force so that it will be the sole negotiator of future tax agreements with countries outside the EU, pointing out that this would have enabled the EU to have won better conditions in the FATCA negotiations with the United States. To make AEI effective, the rapporteur says that the member states must mobilise sufficient human, technological and financial resources to cope with the quantity and complexity of information to be exchanged from 1 January 2015 onwards and to introduce an appropriate system of penalties for failure to comply by individuals or bodies subject to tax. (FG/transl.fl)