Brussels, 18/05/2016 (Agence Europe) - The member states are expected to call upon the Commission to consider legislative initiatives to make it obligatory to communicate information to the tax administrations on aggressive tax planning strategies, according to draft conclusions prepared ahead of the Ecofin Council meeting of 25 May.
The Commission is not building on sand and is expected to take its inspiration from action 12 of the OECD's 'BEPS' action plan to fight aggressive tax optimisation, according to the draft Council conclusions, to bring in deterrent measures for intermediaries promoting tax evasion or avoidance schemes.
On 7 June, when it presents amendments to the directive on money laundering to step up the fight against the financing of terrorism, the Commission is also expected to publish a communication containing promises of initiatives regarding tax advisers. The Commissioner for Taxation, Pierre Moscovici, recently promised, at a debate at the EP, that he would shed light on the activities of such organisations. The Commission's forthcoming communication may also announce further amendments to the directive on administrative cooperation to include an exchange between tax administrations of information on the beneficial owners of trusts and shell companies. The revision of the anti-money laundering directive may therefore make provision for the tax administrations to have access to this information. The Commission has recently been examining several options: obligatory registration where the trustee is located; the registration of all trusts (however, the Commission stresses the administrative burden this would entail); a public register (but the effect of this on data protection would have to be examined).
The exchange of information on the beneficial owners may be brought into the directive on administrative cooperation by means of amendments which may be made to it to add provisions on the resolution of taxation disputes, which the Commission is currently looking into. The initiative has fallen slightly behind schedule.
The draft conclusions of the Council also calls upon the 'Corporate taxation code of conduct' group to start work on a European list of tax havens by September 2016 and to determine which countries should be monitored. The list of tax havens and a list of counter-measures are expected to be approved by the Council in 2017. These counter-measures are not expected to be limited to the field of taxation, according to the draft conclusions. The criteria retained to define a tax haven are expected to be based around transparency, but the 'code of conduct' group is also to look into criteria based on the existence of harmful tax regimes and other criteria inspired by BEPS, according to the draft Ecofin conclusions.
The draft conclusions also stress that the states support an update of the principles of good tax governance to be used as a provision in future negotiations with third countries.
Referring to the Commission's recommendation of January of this year to revise the bilateral tax agreements, the states will take note of this and stress that this is a matter for their own competence.
Sweden has parliamentary reservations regarding the conclusions, but the meeting of the Permanent Representatives of the Member States to the EU on Wednesday 18 May is expected to resolve these matters, along with the possibility of an agreement on the proposed anti-tax avoidance directive at the Ecofin meeting of 25 May. EUROPE will return to this. (Original version in French by youElodie Lamer)