Belgian Finance Minister Accuses Britain Of Wrecking The Savings Tax

Ulrika Lomas, Tax-news.com, Luxembourg

06 June 2000

Yesterday's meeting of EU Finance ministers in Luxembourg failed to resolve the savings tax impasse, as expected. Ministers agreed to bounce the issue forward to June 18th, the day before the end-of-presidency summit in Feira, Portugal, when the presence of Prime Ministers might improve the chances of arriving at a deal.

The Belgian finance minister, Didier Reynders gave voice to a suspicion in the many peoples' minds by saying that he thought Britain was trying to load up the dossier with so many conditions just in order to prevent any agreement (in the interests of of its overseas dependencies, although he didn't go so far as to say that).

The position remains that Portugal is pushing the optional situation foreseen by the original directive, allowing a national choice between imposing a tax or providing information to other member states (ie breaking banking secrecy).

The British insist that after 5 years all countries would move to the information exchange model, but this is resisted to varying degrees of commitment by Austria, Greece, Belgium and Luxembourg. The Germans also probably resist it, but don't like to say so.

Luxembourg seems now to have joined the UK in demanding that non-EU countries should also subscribe to the information-sharing model (a deal-breaking condition, probably). Britain also wants reciprocity, ie it would give information only to countries that gave it in return.

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