Reforming Withholding Tax Procedures:

How can an efficient and accurate tax collection system improve cross-border
investment and integrate the EU’s capital markets?


Tuesday, November 3 at 15:00 CET, Online


Invitation only

In its action plan published on the 23rd of September, the European Commission is considering, in order to lower costs for cross-border investors and prevent tax fraud, to propose a common, standardised, EU-wide system for withholding tax relief at source. Both Markets4Europe and the High-Level Forum have recommended preventing the double taxation of cross-border investors by implementing common practices such as the OECD’s TRACE model. Such reform can also help optimise tax collection and prevent tax fraud (such as the Cum/Ex and Cum/Cum file). The European Commission estimates that optimising WHT practices will save cross-border investors 8 billion EUR a year while Member States could recover 55 billion EUR by capturing cross-border taxes accurately. The Tax Package of July 2020 announced a legislative initiative for introducing a common, standardised, EU-wide system for withholding tax relief at source, accompanied by an exchange of information and cooperation mechanism among tax administrations and financial markets supervisory authorities based on options such as TRACE. One country in the EU – Finland – has already gone forward with such a reform. What can we learn from their experience? How could this reform be implemented in the EU?

For more information:

Paulien Guérin, EBF, Senior Policy Adviser, p.guerin@ebf.eu
j.borgognone@ebf.eu, EBF, Policy Adviser, j.borgognone@ebf.eu

The Conference is sponsored by