The agreement reached by the EU Council is “a step in the right direction towards facilitating cross-border investments and completing the Capital Markets Union (CMU)”, stressed MEP Herbert Dorfmann (EPP, Italian) in his draft report on the ‘FASTER’ initiative on withholding tax procedures in the EU (see EUROPE 13409/1) on Wednesday 9 October.
Although the European Parliament delivered its opinion in February (see EUROPE 13360/13), the Council decided to consult it again, given the fundamental differences with the European Commission’s original proposal.
The rapporteur welcomes the fact that the Council’s position also introduces important measures to detect potential tax fraud or abuse of withholding tax. “However, it is regrettable that the Council decided to postpone the entry into force until 2030, given the current importance of the completion of the CMU, as recently highlighted by the reports by Mario Draghi and Enrico Letta”, qualified the MEP. He believes that the Council should adopt this text quickly, given the need for legal certainty and citizens’ interest in benefiting from a faster refund process.
Given the time needed to transpose the directive into national legislation and the political will to speed up its adoption, the rapporteur proposes that Parliament approve the proposal without amendments, in accordance with a simplified procedure. The European Parliament Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs will review the draft report and decide on the procedure at its meeting on Monday 14 October.
Read the report: https://aeur.eu/f/dtq (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)