New Multinational Dividend Tax Calculation Tool Launched By Datavenue

by Phillip Morton, Investors Offshore.com

06 November 2003

Datavenue, a specialist financial data company, is to launch a new product that will provide tax positions for dividends payable and receivable from multiple global locations. It's known as Dividend Tax Data (DTD) and will allow index providers and fund managers to accurately measure total portfolio returns.

Currently the market uses static tax rates, usually from the perspective of one location (e.g. Luxembourg), which for the holder of the stock can be significantly inaccurate, as the applicable tax rate will vary, dependant on the tax rate the shareholder has to pay, due to his country of residence.

Datavenue’s product will allow the calculation of true returns, which will depend on the location and the holding of the stock-holder and the country of the paying company, based on a series of double tax treaties, and the corresponding withholding rates.

This is the first time that such data will be made available to the industry in this readily available form, and is expected to transform the methodology of Total Return indices and the funds that track them. The difference in performance for some funds, using the true tax rates, may be significant.

Datavenue’s product contains tax rates for over 90 global locations, from a paying and receiving perspective as well as all variations in the rates based on other factors, such as level of holdings.

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