On 13 March 2018, the Economic and Financial Affairs Council of the European Union reached agreement on a proposal aimed at boosting transparency in order to tackle aggressive cross-border tax planning.

The draft directive is the latest of a number of measures designed to prevent corporate tax avoidance, and it will require intermediaries such as tax advisors, accountants and lawyers that design and/or promote tax planning schemes to report schemes that are considered potentially aggressive.

The member states will be required to automatically exchange the information they receive through a centralised database. This will enable new risks of tax avoidance to be determined earlier and measures to be taken to block harmful arrangements.

Member states will be obliged to impose penalties on intermediaries that do not comply with the transparency measures.

“Enhancing transparency is key to our strategy to combat tax avoidance and tax evasion”, said Vladislav Goranov, minister for finance of Bulgaria, which currently holds the Council presidency. “If the authorities receive information about aggressive tax planning schemes before they are implemented, they will be able to close down loopholes before revenue is lost.”

Member states find it increasingly difficult to protect their tax bases from erosion, as cross-border tax planning structures become ever more sophisticated. The draft directive is aimed at preventing aggressive tax planning by enabling increased scrutiny of the activities of tax intermediaries.

The draft directive establishes ‘hallmarks’ to identify the types of schemes to be reported to the tax authorities. Such hallmarks can include the use of cross-border losses to reduce tax liability, the use of special preferential tax regimes, or arrangements through countries that do not meet international good governance standards. Intermediaries that design or provide schemes bearing any one of these key hallmarks will now have to report these schemes to the tax authorities before they are used. The requirement to report a scheme will not imply that it is harmful, only that it may be of interest to tax authorities for further scrutiny. Whilst many schemes have entirely legitimate purposes, the aim is to identify those that do not.

The proposal broadly reflects action 12 of the OECD’s 2013 action plan to prevent tax base erosion and profit shifting.

Next steps

The new reporting requirements will enter into force on 1 July 2020, with EU Member States obliged to exchange information every 3 months after that. The first exchange will take place by 31st October 2020.

(Sources: European Council | European Commission)

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