At a working group session this Thursday 8 February, the member states will again discuss the transparency of tax intermediaries. A new working document of the Bulgarian Presidency, dated 5 February which EUROPE has had sight of, has undergone a few changes.
Readers may recall that the previous version of the text (see EUROPE 11945) stipulated that if a tax scheme devised by an intermediary concerned more than one EU country, the intermediary had to submit the scheme to the tax authorities of the country in which it was established. The new text, however, revisits the Commission's approach, whereby the information would be submitted to the tax authorities of the taxpayer's country of establishment.
The date of the first exchange of information between member states also changes. Under the latest version, this will begin on 30 April 2020 rather than the last quarter of 2019.
Among the markers used to determine the schemes to be submitted, one which provided for prior agreements on bilateral or multilateral transfer prices to be excluded from the scope of this exchange where the international tax agreement under which the prior transfer price agreement was negotiated does not authorise its disclosure to third parties has been removed. All questions concerning the marker referring to the tax rates of a given jurisdiction are, furthermore, still in brackets. (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)