In its response to the European Commission’s public consultation on the ‘UNSHELL’ directive against shell companies (see EUROPE 12859/5), the European Tax Adviser Federation (ETAF) notes a “multiplication of anti-abuse regulations at European level” which “form an increasingly confusing patchwork for taxpayers and tax advisers”.
The ETAF underlines that the Anti Tax Avoidance Directive and the latest update to the Directive on Administrative Cooperation are “already effective tools to combat tax avoidance and abuse”.
ETAF hopes that the forthcoming directive to end the misuse of shell companies will also contribute to the simplification of tax law and reducing the administrative burden.
The organisation believes it is “essential to have a uniform and sufficiently concrete concept of minimum economic substance to which all Member States align their anti-abuse standards, in order to ensure legal certainty”.
In general, the European Federation considers that the burden of proof should be reconsidered throughout the whole text, in particular when it comes to the rebuttal mechanism and the exemption for lack of tax motives, which are two core safeguards of the Directive.
Read the ETAF contribution: https://aeur.eu/f/158 (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)