Europe’s 14-year struggle to tax its citizens’ offshore savings has flopped, after investors in countries such as Switzerland and Luxembourg exploited loopholes in a controversial savings law. In the first six months of the law’s operation, Switzerland the world’s leading offshore financial centre raised only €100m in withholding taxes on the vast savings held there by European Union citizens.
European Union withholding tax (EU Tax)
The so-called European Union withholding tax is a withholding tax which is deducted from interest earned by European Union residents on their investments made in another member state, by the state in which the investment is held. The European Union itself has no taxation powers, so the name is strictly a misnomer. The aim of the tax is to ensure that citizens of one member state do not evade taxation by depositing funds outside the jurisdiction of residence and so distort the single market. The tax is withheld at source and passed on to the EU Country of residence. All but three member states disclose the recipient of the interest concerned. Most EU states already apply a withholding tax to savings and investment income earned by their nationals on deposits and investments in their own states. The Directive seeks to bring inter-state income into the same arrangement, under the Single Market policy.
Creation of EU Tax Directive
The tax was introduced at the time of the introduction of the European Union Savings Directive (EUSD), a directive on the taxation of interest income from savings within the European Union that came into effect on 1 July 2005.
Objective of the EU Savings Directive
The original aim of the EUSD was that all countries would freely disclose interest earned by a resident of an EU country in order to ensure that the interest was fully declared in his country of residence. The plan was that non-EU countries would also agree to disclose information about the interest earned by EU residents. Many non-EU states and countries agreed to introduce similar measures. These countries included most tax havens and dependent territories of the EU countries. Countries such as the Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey, Cayman Islands, Andorra, Turks & Caicos, British Virgin Islands, Monaco, Switzerland, and many others thus agreed to implement similar or transitional arrangements (see below). The transitional arrangements involved the payment of a withholding tax whilst bank secrecy remained protected.
Photo credit: Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Digital Artist via Visual Hunt / CC BY-NC
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