De Groenen in het Europees Parlement stellen de volgende planning voor voor de bijzondere parlementscommissie die onderzoek gaat doen naar belastingontwijking (TAXE-commissie).

Gezien het erg brede mandaat dat is aangenomen in plenaire stemming, vragen we om een uitgebreid onderzoek naar vennootschapsbelasting en hun problematische eigenschappen in de Europese Unie en – waar relevant – daarbuiten.

In termen van het juridisch onderzoek geeft het mandaat een duidelijke richting:

  • Is Europese mededingingswetgeving geschonden?
  • En zijn de Europese afspraken over het uitwisselen van belastingafspraken nagekomen?
  • Heeft de Europese Commissie alles gedaan binnen haar macht en met het oog op haar verplichting om de EU-verdragen te hoeden om er zeker van te zijn dat Europese mededingings- en belastingwetgeving is geïmplementeerd?
  • Verbraken EU-lidstaten de afspraak om oprecht samen te werken door in de afgelopen tientallen jaren willens en wetens op grote schaal publieke financiën uit te hollen?

Het mandaat noemt niet expliciet het vraagstuk van overeenstemming met EU-wetgeving, in het bijzonder de vrijheid van vestiging en de vrijheid om diensten te leveren. Aangezien de Raad van Ministers dit onderwerp aandroeg, vragen we om dit toe te voegen aan het juridische onderzoek.

Tenslotte is het zaak voor de bijzondere commissie om te onderzoeken welke wetgevende en niet-wetgevende maatregelen door EU-landen, door de Europese Unie en op wereldschaal genomen kunnen worden op basis van een grondige analyse van de huidige systemen. Daarvoor stellen we zes bijlages voor waarop de commissie in de komende weken kan voortbouwen voor haar onderzoek. Daar moet enige flexibiliteit in worden ingebouwd, in het bijzonder met het oog op de jurisdictie om speciale belastingafspraken te onderzoeken. Dat kunnen we alleen doen als de TAXE-commissie een uitgebreid aantal documenten opvraagt. Deze bijlages zijn opgesteld na vertrouwelijke gesprekken met betrokkenen in de 'agressieve belastingplanningssector' en met medewerkers van belastingautoriteiten.

Studies en juridische onderzoeken om uit te voeren

Het lijkt ons het efficiëntst om eerst de documenten te analyseren, in het bijzonder die van de werkgroep voor de gedragscode bedrijfsbelasting, zodat we hoorzittingen en werkbezoeken beter kunnen voorbereiden. Aangezien we weten dat toegang tot informatie van uiterst belang is, stellen we voor dat de bijzondere commissie een beveiligde cloudopslag opstelt waar insiders van multinationals, consultants, maatschappelijke organisaties en ambtenaren van belastingautoriteiten anoniem informatie kunnen uploaden.

1. Ask for following documents to be transmitted:

From Commission and Council

  • All Commission documents concerning the code of conduct (including minutes).
  • All documents, including minutes, non-papers and questions, related to corporate taxation, reports and minutes (Non Chatham House versions) from expert groups, platform good governance in tax matters, working party IV on direct taxation, tax policy group, EU joint transfer pricing forum, progress taxation report
  • Minutes of college of commissioners when dealing with corporate taxation / tax havens.
  • Minutes of meetings between Commissioners and external actors when discussing corporate taxation and tax havens

Council

  • All documents/annexes/footnotes/minutes (MS) of Code of Conduct WG on taxation. List of all measures notified/raised, and list of measures tackled.
  • All documents, including non-papers and questions, related to corporate taxation, reports and minutes from expert groups, platform good governance in tax matters, working party IV on direct taxation, tax policy group, EU joint transfer pricing forum, all expert groups, progress taxation report
  • Minutes of ECOFIN when dealing with corporate taxation / tax havens.

From Member States

  • All minutes of national representatives in Council WGs
  • Overview (including date and name of company) of all rulings issued since 1991 defined as follows: any advance interpretation or application of a legal provision for a cross border situation or transaction of a company which might lead to a loss of tax in Member States or which might lead to tax savings for the company resulting from artificial intra-group transfers of profits
  • Based on this (on demand) specific rulings AND all related documents leading to the conclusion of such rulings
  • All information shared with other Member States pursuant to COUNCIL DIRECTIVE 2011/16/EU article 9 and 77/799/EEC article 4
  • Quantitative / qualitative information from tax authorities on the control of tax rulings / advanced pricing agreement. Numbers on capacity of tax authorities (for instance FTEs working on assessing tax rulings in relation to FDI)
  • National black lists for tax havens, their evolution and the justifications

From Luxembourg

  • Full report Krecké

From Third Countries

  • Overview of rulings issued for companies established or incorporated in the EU.
  • Overview of patent boxes. etc.

Ask Commission to produce following documents:

  • Overview of features of MS and relevant third country corporate tax systems that might be deemed to be fitting the criteria set out in COMMISSION RECOMMENDATION of 6.12.2012 on aggressive tax planning
  • Overview of planned, past and ongoing fiscal state aid investigations, including an explanation of what has triggered the investigations (denunciations? / list of non followed up denouncements)
  • A 77/799/EEC article 4 since 1991
  • Ovssessment of the implementation of COUNCIL DIRECTIVE 2011/16/EU article 9 anderview of effective corporate tax rate of 50 biggest companies in every MS

2. Indicative list of countries to be looked at for potentially problematic tax rulings, patent boxes or other similar measures

EU

  • Luxembourg
  • The Netherlands
  • Ireland
  • Belgium
  • UK & Gibraltar
  • Malta
  • Cyprus
  • France
  • Hungary
  • Portugal
  • Spain

Rationale for countries above: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_STATEMENT-14-2800_en.htm and http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-1073_en.htm

  • Lativa
  • Austria

see annex intermediary companies

Third Countries

  • Switzerland (Zug and Geneva cantons in particular)
  • Lichtenstein
  • Singapore
  • Hongkong
  • Bermudas
  • Cayman Islands
  • British Virgin Islands
  • Dubai
  • Panama
  • Costa Rica
  • Nevis Island
  • Belize
  • Isle of Man/Jersey/Guernsey and other Channel Islands
  • Mauritius
  • Seychelles
  • USA (Delaware)

3. People to invite

Ex tax commissioners

  • Frits Bolkestein
  • László Kovács
  • Algirdas Šemeta

Ex competition commissioners

  • Mario Monti
  • Neelie Kroes
  • Joaquín Almunia

Commission officials

  • Former director general TACSUD Michel Aujean

Luxembourg

  • J. Krecké
  • Marius Kohl
  • JC Juncker
  • P. Gramegna

The Netherlands

  • Wouter Bos
  • Gerrit Zalm
  • Eric Wiebes
  • Jan Kees de Jager
  • Jeroen Dijsselbloem

Belgium

  • Maystadt
  • Reynders

Ireland

  • Bertie Ahern
  • Charlie McCreevy
  • Brian Cowen

UK

  • George Osborne
  • Gordon Brown

From several Member States

  • Director-generals/directors of finance ministries

Companies

  • IKEA, Amazon, Google, Starbucks, Apple, McDonalds, InBev, Alcoa, Fiat, Chrysler, U2 / Rolling Stones, Energias de Portugal (EDP), Vodafone, Boots Barclays (head of its aggressive tax planning unit), BNP, Deutsche Bank; HSBC (Stephen Green)
  • Big four (for PWC for example head of transfer pricing: Isabel Verlinden)

Experts

  • Antoine Deltour Richard Murphy (Tax Justice Network), Prosecutor Morten Eriksen of Norway (Ikea case) Prem Sikka Professor of Accounting, Centre for Global Accountability, Essex Business School), Professor Sol Picciotto Emeritus Lancaster University , Professor Guttorm Schjeldrup, Thomas Rixen (Professor University Bamberg), EPSU (to present McDonalds case), Indridi H. Thorlaksson, Director for Taxation of Iceland, Nicholas Shaxon, Saind-AMond (OECD)

Others

  • Norbert Walter-Borjans (finance minister NRW – EON case)

4. Special regimes, measures, practices, instruments to look into

Only the examination of documents of the code of conduct on business taxation working group (including annexes and room documents) will enable us to put together a more complete list of regimes, measures and practices to examine. It appears that some 400 regimes were notified, but only around 100 tackled. The list below is only indicative, and the different regimes, measures, practices and instruments might be imbricated. Certain special
regimes might have been fully are partially abolished or replaced.

Tax rulings different angles:

  • Mismatches in transfer pricing methods
  • Tax planning within groups with transparent and opaque entities in one Member State
  • Profit Participating Loans PPL and Profit Participating Shares PPS (in particular PPS and PPL mismatches with Third Countries)
  • Variations of the Model “Swiss-Dutch Sandwich”.
  • Combination of several activities and schemes of a company
  • Stepping stone tax planning
  • Wealth structuring & Trusts

Tax planning instruments:

  • Holding regimes
  • Group coordination services
  • Group financing (cash pools or treasury tools)
  • Patent Boxes / IP Regimes / Group licencing
  • Free zones/ free ports / economic zones
  • Insurrance, re-insurance and captive insurance, in-house insurance (deductible in Germany and not taxed in Bermudas for example)
  • Offshore or exempt companies
  • Investment funds (through special tax regimes)
  • And: Permission to use instrument without legal provision

Specific and special regimes such as:

  • Belgium: excess profit ruling system
  • Belgium: patent box
  • Cyprus: patent box
  • Cyprus: taxation of interest and the participation exemption
  • Hungary: determining the tax base for interest payments received from abroad
  • Ireland: "Double Irish"
  • Lichtenstein: Full exemption for dividends and gains, exemption for capital gains combined with a tax deductible write down/ Special Regime for Private Asset Structures
  • Luxembourg: Group Financing Companies - Advance Confirmation of Margins.
  • The Netherlands: Structuring of royalties on payments to third countries via NL (where 0% rate on royalties exist).
  • Structuring of dividends: Dutch "deelnemingsvrijstelling" via bilateral tax treaties.
  • "Pooling": combining financing and insurance activities of a company in a specifically designed group
  • Spain: Empresas de Tenencia de Valores Extranjeros (ETVE) entities holding foreign securities. SICAV 'investment company with variable capital'
  • UK: patent box
  • UK (Gibraltar): - Income Tax Act 2010 (including inbound profit transfers and "shell companies")
  • UK ( Guernsey & Jersey): Zero-Ten Corporate Tax Regime / Income tax law
  • UK: A derogation to the anti-abuse clause in CFC legislation: An (partial, up to 80%) exemption for passive income means that a financing operation of the company's e.g. Cayman subsidiary leads to effective tax rates at 5% or so.
  • UK (Ile of Man): 0% corporate tax rate / retail tax

5. Intermediary Companies

"As advisers, tax intermediaries play a vital role in all tax systems, helping taxpayers understand and comply with their tax obligations in an increasingly complex world. But some of them are also designers and promoters of aggressive tax planning, a role that has a negative impact on tax systems." (http://www.oecd.org/tax/administration/39882938.pdf)

Potentially problematic tax intermediaries include

6. Studies

  • Disaggregated study estimating the losses to public finances in and across the EU since 1991 due to any form of aggressive tax planning
  • Comprehensive study on the most problematic features of corporate tax systems in the EU, and its interaction with third country systems.
  • Comprehensive study on the most salient tax planning instruments used by MNCs (ranging from holdings to captive insurance and investment funds, see relevant annex)
  • Studies on the national systems in countries listed in the respective annex, within and outside the EU.
  • Study on FDI flows and stocks in the EU and relevant 3rd countries relative to size of a) population and b) real economic activity. Key indicator for aggressive corporate tax planning
  • Comparative study on the workings and resources of MS tax authorities & the judicial side, evolution over the past 25 years, best practice etc.

Legal opinions:

  • Legal Appraisal of exchange obligations concerning rulings and other measures similar in nature or effect in accordance with directive 2011/16/EU and Directive 77/799/EEC, including the question whether any information concerning following rulings are covered by the exchange obligation: http://ec.europa.eu/competition/state_aid/cases/254685/254685_1614265_7… http://ec.europa.eu/competition/state_aid/cases/253200/253200_1582634_8… http://ec.europa.eu/competition/state_aid/cases/253201/253201_1596706_6…
  • The same question should be asked in relationship to all the tax rulings that were made public in recent months.
  • Study on fiscal state aid in the EU, including on the question of what the prima facia legal consequences of the four cases currently investigated for hundreds of other similar rulings would be.
  • Legal appraisal of the relevance of losses to public finances in and across the EU, in particular with regard to the sincere cooperation principle enshrined in article 4.3 of TEU.
  • Legal appraisal of the Commission’s duty to review fiscal state aid and its obligation to ensure the application of EU tax law such as 2011/16/EU and Directive 77/799/EEC.
  • Legal appraisal of the compatibility of the modified nexus approach with EU law and especially the freedom of establishment and the freedom to provide services
  • Legal study analysing the powers of the UK, the Netherlands and France vis-a-vis any kind of their overseas territories, crown dependencies etc.
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