On March 18, 2015 the European Commission presented its so called Tax Transparency Package.
A key element of this Package is a proposal to introduce the automatic exchange of information between Member States on their tax rulings.
While this measure – if adopted quickly in all member states – will bring a first little step towards the transparency necessary to fight against harmful tax practices of multinational enterprises, another proposal put forward by the Commission as part of the Tax Transparency Package might cause new problems and loopholes: The Commission is proposing to repeal the EU Savings Taxation Directive telling that it has been overtaken by more ambitious legislation, namely the revised Directive on Administrative Cooperation.
As we are concerned that repealing the EU Savings Taxation Directive might have unintended consequences, we have written an Open letter to Commissioner Moscovici. In order to ensure public transparency and translation in several languages, we have also transmitted our questions within the written question procedure (see Written Question 1 and Written Question 2).
On the 12th of May 2015, we received a reply from Commissioner Moscovici.