Proposition 54K1574

Projet de loi portant assentiment à l'Avenant entre le Royaume de Belgique et la Confédération suisse modifiant la Convention du 28 août 1978 entre le Royaume de Belgique et la Confédération suisse en vue d'éviter les doubles impositions en matière d'impôts sur le revenu et sur la fortune, fait à Bruxelles le 10 avril 2014.

General information ¶

Submitted by

MR Swedish coalition

Submission date

Jan. 12, 2016

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

Switzerland tax evasion tax convention tax avoidance double taxation tax on income international agreement exchange of information corporation tax wealth tax

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

CD&V Vooruit LE PS | SP ∉ Open Vld N-VA LDD MR PP VB

Abstained from voting

Groen Ecolo PVDA | PTB

Contact form ¶

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Discussion ¶

Feb. 18, 2016 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

Mr Vandenput, rapporteur, refers to the written report.

I will climb the floor, because I will once again try to prevent us from missing a great chance of success in the fight against fraud. Let me clarify it. The texts we approve today have been negotiated for a long time. The signature dates, if I am not mistaken, from March or April 2014. Not long after the installation of the new government, I began to ask the Minister of Finance where the text remained. This is a short text. It could not be difficult to write a short memory of explanation.

But the text remained out, which only increased suspicion. It seemed that the government was deliberately timing, because it would rather regularize the black money held in Switzerland through the announced regularization.

That regularization does not exist today. The majority is facing a difficult budget control in March. Well, there is money here, colleagues. The text, which we will later approve as an example of constructive opposition, gives the Belgian Fiscal Authority the opportunity to ask the Swiss Fiscal Authority to lift the Swiss bank secret and provide the information to the Belgian Fiscal Authority, so that we can do something about the tax fraud.

We have just discussed it extensively and we unanimously agree that we must fight social fraud. Well, colleagues of the majority, you are given the opportunity to prove that you want to do as much work as fighting tax fraud.

What is the problem? First, your regularization has not yet been completed. Second, the text, which we will approve later, in its final provision states that the Convention shall enter into force on 1 January of the year following its approval. Specifically, it means that the Convention will be applicable only from 1 January 2017.

I have already called for acceleration and improvement in the committee, but I was not followed in my question by the members of the majority.

However, I have now informed myself further. There is a method or procedure in which Belgium addresses the other Contracting State, which is Switzerland, and asks whether there can be consensus on a declaration of provisional application. A declaration of provisional application means that from the moment that that declaration is published in the Belgian Official Journal, the Convention can be applied. No lawyer of the one or the other fraudster can then rely on the fact that the convention will not enter into force until 1 January 2017. With such a declaration of provisional application, the text after the publication of the declaration in the Belgian Staatsblad is contradictory erga omnes, to use even a Latin word.

Colleagues, I invite you, when you have time, to go to the reading room and check out Le Monde. A colleague has the text with him. In Le Monde today there is an article about a whistleblower who gave information about how a major Swiss bank, UBS, works.

The person concerned tells that that Swiss bank – you can be assured, however, that all other Swiss banks also act in this way – by country, including in France, as stated in the article, and in Belgium, is in contact with stakeholders of Swiss banks, of large capital and large fortunes parked in Switzerland. This information is ⁇ useful for our Belgian tax authorities.

Mrs. Secretary of State, my question to you is the following.

Are you also concerned that we must wait until 1 January 2017 before we can use the present treaty? Is the current government willing to take the step towards Switzerland, to try to obtain a declaration of provisional application from Switzerland?

Our group strongly urges this.

I have already pointed out that my proposal is an example of constructive opposition. You need to look for money, to close your budget and be able to realize your budget path. With our proposal, you can find money that you do not need to look for at middle-income or low-income. It is a means of providing, in a more or less socially acceptable way, a part of a solution to a budget problem, for which you are responsible and that you have created yourself.

I will not return to all that has already been said in the committee, but I will highlight two new elements.

First of all, we support the request and suggestion of our respected colleague Van der Maelen in favour of an exchange of epistles between Belgium and Switzerland to speed up the implementation of the agreement on the exchange of tax data in the future. This would allow to work, among other things, on the case of UBS. We now know – as Le Monde d’aujourd’hui states – that Belgian taxpayers have accounts in Switzerland. It would therefore be for Belgium to request their identity to the Swiss tax in order to regularize this situation, the aim being to put in place justice to punish those taxpayers who have evaded tax in our country.

Then, the reason why the Ecolo-Groen group will abstain today is obviously not motivated by any opposition to the fight against tax fraud, but by the fact that this convention promotes a system of data exchange that is not automatic. The OECD model, which will come into force in 2017, provides for a spontaneous exchange. Therefore, it is a shame to equip ourselves with an imperfect tool, while, from next year, the OECD will offer us the opportunity to resort to such an exchange with Switzerland.

We consider this to be a step in the right direction, but it remains insufficient. This is why we abstained.

Mr. Speaker, like Mr. Hellings, I consider that this convention is largely going in the right direction, but some points pose problems. I will keep two.

First, I also think of the non-automatic exchange of information. In fact, the explanation of the reasons reads: "Al ⁇ the advance allows the exchange of tax information automatically or spontaneously, Switzerland has clearly indicated, during the negotiations in May 2013, that it intends, in practice, to limit the exchange of information to the exchange on request."

Second, this text provides for preventing what it calls “intelligence fishing.” These are, in this case, requests for tax information that would be too general and not sufficiently precise. This is quite worrying in the sense that, last December, the Netherlands obtained from Switzerland a huge amount of tax data relating to Dutch UBS customers, which could thus be taxed. The request from the Netherlands was extremely vague. Therefore, if the text in question, which refuses fishing to information, is applied, it is possible that Belgium does not make such a request.

It would be very damaging to deprive ourselves in this way of obtaining crucial information about large fraudsters who have "plunged" their money into Swiss banks. That is why we believe that this text is far from optimal in the fight against large-scale tax fraud.

Do other members want to speak? (No to)

Madam Schmidt, you have the word.

Mr. Van der Maelen, as you know, the fight against tax fraud is a very important task for this government.

I have taken note of your well-formulated comment on the declaration of provisional application. I would be pleased to forward your comments to my colleagues in the government. Then it can be checked whether or not this option can be opted for. I was not present at the discussions in the committee. I can see that you have done your homework and that you have achieved these findings. I take record of that. A declaration of provisional application is a nice explanation, I think. I will therefore gladly pass this on to the colleagues responsible for that bill and those international instruments so that it can be further discussed.