Jersey Publishes EU Savings Tax Figures

by Jason Gorringe, Tax-News.com, London

20 September 2011

Jersey’s Comptroller of Taxes has remitted to EU member states a total of GBP4m in retention tax for the year 2010.

Retention tax is applied by Jersey paying agents and passed to the Comptroller of Taxes in accordance with the EU Savings Tax Directive, which requires withholding tax to be applied to the deposits of the residents of EU member states.

Under the terms of the Directive, 75% of the tax retained (GBP4m) is sent to the individual member states and the remaining 25% (GBP1.3m) is to be retained by the Jersey government. Due to the fuller effect of low interest rates, the amount of tax retained in 2010 is significantly less than in 2009 when GBP8.85m was remitted to the Member States and GBP2.99m was retained by the Treasury.

The collection of retention tax relies upon the co-operation of local paying agents. The Comptroller of Taxes and the President of the Bankers’ Federation are both happy that the process of exchanging information and the payment of retention tax is continuing to work extremely well.

Comptroller of Taxes, Malcolm Campbell, said: "I am extremely grateful once again for all the help received from paying agents, in particular banks, which bear the greatest burden as a result of these agreements."

The Treasury and Resources Minister, Philip Ozouf, said: "As in previous years this shows that Jersey continues to honour the commitments that it entered into voluntarily with member states."

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