13 February 2002

EMAC votes on Taxation of Savings Income Directive

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The Report on Taxation of Savings Income will be voted in parliamentary Committee on its next meeting on 19-20 February. The rapporteur Peres Royo welcomes this new proposal being subject to 20 amendments.

The rapporteur proposes a number of amendments, seeking in particular to extend the scope of the proposed automatic information exchange to legal persons as well, in order to make it more difficult to circumvent the rules. Other amendments concern the definition of interest payments, in particular as regards investment funds (UCITS), and the application of the rules in third countries and in the Member States' associated and dependent territories.

Among others the rapporteur states that:

although there are arguably some practical difficulties in levying a withholding tax on legal persons, this does not apply to the exchange of information. He therefore proposes that information should be exchanged for all non-resident whether they are natural or legal persons.

UCITS should be included but only to the extent that the income is to be considered as deriving from debt claims. The new proposal significantly lowers the threshold for that income being considered as interest payments. Under the terms of the 1998 proposal, income would be considered as interest income if the underlying assets were made up of at least 50% interest bearing instruments. This limit has now been lowered to 15%.

Next to the 20 amendments made by the rapporteur himself another 38 amendments have been made by other parliamentarians so far.

See explanatory statement and amendments suggested by the rapporteur, and
amendments by other parliamentarians.

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