Note to debtors of payroll tax for payments to non-residents (section 228, § 3 BITC or so-called ‘catch-all provision’)
On 23 July 2014, the Belgian Central Tax Administration published a note to the debtors of payroll tax for payments to non-residents in the Belgian Gazette, which provides for some welcome clarifications. Background Following the Miscellaneous Provisions Act of 13 December 2012 (published in the Belgian Official Gazette on 20 December 2012) and the Royal
Global Tax Accounting Services Newsletter (April– June 2014)
In this release, an update is provided on a variety of accounting and reporting developments, including: country-by-country reporting the OECD project on hybrid mismatch arrangements, and the new converged standard on revenue recognition recently issued by the Financial Accounting Standards Board and International Accounting Standards Board Your attention is also drawn to some significant tax
OECD releases global standard for automatic exchange of tax information
Starting in 2012, political interest has increasingly focused on the opportunities provided by an automatic exchange of information between tax authorities. On 6 September 2013, the G20 Leaders committed to the automatic exchange of information as the new global standard and fully supported the OECD work for developing a single standard for automatic exchange of
VAT: Practice note – Retention of documents
The Belgian Income Tax and VAT authorities recently published a combined practice note commenting on the alignment of the Income Tax and VAT procedures as regards the retention of documents. What is new for VAT is the fact that the delivery of a receipt in case of retention of documents by the VAT authorities is
OECD Publishes 2014 Update to Model Tax Convention
The OECD Council approved the 2014 Update to the OECD Model Tax Convention (the 2014 Update) on 15 July 2014. The 2014 Update was already approved by the Committee on Fiscal Affairs on 26 June 2014. The 2014 Update can be found here. The 2014 Update mainly reflects the work that was carried out by the OECD
Update: Member States agree to amend Parent-Subsidiary Directive
The European Union’s (EU) 28 Finance Ministers agreed, on June 20, 2014, to amend the EU’s Parent –Subsidiary Directive (Directive), addressing the effects of tax arbitrage resulting from EU Member States’ varying tax treatments of hybrid loans. The Member States have agreed that the Directive’s benefits should not result in ‘double non-taxation,’ that is, income going untaxed
Update – Exemption method for foreign professional income incompatible with EU Law
As mentioned in our headline of 17 December 2013, Belgium was sentenced by the European Court of Justice for breaching EU law. The relevant judgment indicated that EU law is violated where a taxpayer cannot effectively benefit from personal tax benefits linked to his family status (e.g. increase in tax free amount for dependent children)
Belgian corporate tax deduction rejected for stock option plan cost recharged by foreign parent company
Court of Appeal of Brussels confirms four-year old decision of Court of First Instance of Brussels. We refer to our HRS Headline of 26 May 2010. On 25 June 2014, the Court of Appeal of Brussels confirmed the decision of the Court of First Instance of Brussels of 16 April 2010. According to this decision,