EU Member States reach agreement on mandatory automatic exchange of financial information on country-by-country reporting (CbCR)
On 8 March 2016, the Member States of the European Union reached a political agreement on the automatic exchange of country-by-country reporting (CbCR) at a meeting of the Ministers of Economic and Financial Affairs in Brussels. The CbC reports contain tax-related financial information of multinational companies. The agreement is, however, still subject to the scrutiny
The Rulings Commission publishes ruling request templates
The Belgian Rulings Commission has recently published ruling request templates. These templates have been prepared in an effort (i) to facilitate access to tax rulings and (ii) for transparency purposes. Ruling request templates have been made available in Dutch and in French for the following relevant transactions: Mergers, Partial demergers, Contribution of a line of
European Commission proposes Anti-Tax Avoidance Package
On 28 January 2016, the EU Commission presented its Anti-Tax Avoidance Package. The continuing political will to address tax avoidance may result in the 100% consensus required by EU Member States to effect the proposed tax changes. The EU-28 governments will have to decide if they are willing to go further than the G20/OECD BEPS
Belgium – Reduced dividend withholding tax rate of 1.6995% for minority corporate shareholders
The Belgian withholding tax act has been recently modified as a result of the European ‘Tate & Lyle’ case. The new Act limits the withholding tax on dividends distributed to foreign minority corporate shareholders by Belgian companies to 1.6995% instead of 27%, if certain conditions are met. In 2012, the European Court of Justice ruled that the Belgian dividend
Lists of tax havens revised
On 27 November 2015 the Council of Ministers revised the lists of tax havens that apply for the purposes of the so-called dividends-received deduction (‘DRD’) and the reporting obligation for payments (to tax havens). Two draft Royal Decrees have been approved that add or delete certain countries to or from the lists following changes to
Luxembourg, Cyprus and Seychelles removed from OECD’s list of uncooperative tax havens
On 30 October 2015, the OECD’s Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes (‘Global Forum’) announced that Cyprus, Luxembourg and the Seychelles are no longer deemed to be non-compliant with the OECD Exchange of Information standard and assigned a new overall rating of ‘Largely Compliant’, following significant changes to their legal
EU Commission’s final decisions in Starbucks and Fiat state aid cases
On 21 October 2015, the European Commission decided that Luxembourg and the Netherlands have granted selective tax advantages to Fiat Finance and Trade and Starbucks, respectively. These are illegal under EU state aid rules. For more information on the key aspects of the investigation and its impact, please have a look at our news alert.
Belgium: new agreement on Tax Shift
On 10 October 2015, the Belgian federal government reached a new agreement on the so-called “tax shift”. The tax shift is the shift from tax on labour to other taxes. The objectives of the tax shift are: To respect the budgetary engagements; A revival of the economy by creating more jobs; Reducing labour taxes to
