Proposition 55K0765

Projet de loi visant à améliorer la transparence du Service des Décisions anticipées.

General information ¶

Author

Vooruit Joris Vandenbroucke

Submission date

Nov. 18, 2019

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

tax authorities tax law administrative transparency

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

Groen CD&V Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP DéFI Open Vld N-VA LDD MR PVDA | PTB VB

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Discussion ¶

March 11, 2021 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

The rapporteur is Mr Vanbesien who refers to his written report.

Colleagues, the present bill simply aims to legally anchor an existing practice. Today, preliminary decisions or rulings are already published by the ruling office. Any decision made by the Pre-Decision Service shall be published, even if it is negative.

The publication of a decision may take some time. For example, a further decision was published in October 2020 – hold it – 2012. With this bill, the applicants want to legalise this practice of publication, no more or less than that. We will therefore approve the simple proposal, because it is so simplistic that one can hardly vote against it.

The delicate issue, namely the legal certainty of the prior decisions, is not addressed by the bill. Unfortunately, the minister has just run away – ⁇ he hears me from the coffee room – but my good colleague Kurt Ravyts questioned the minister about it yesterday.

Meanwhile, it has been shown that the Special Tax Inspection does not always comply with the decisions taken by the Pre-Decision Service. We therefore look forward to the initiatives of the Minister to mitigate the conflicts between his two services of the FOD Finance and to ensure legal certainty for companies.

First of all, I would like to say that this system is legal. It allows ⁇ and municipalities – and not just multinational companies – to go through a ⁇ complex tax system. This is a beneficial system.

There was already the habit of communicating the decisions made. The proposal of the colleague further enhances this transparency. This is a very good thing. Finally, all companies and all municipalities affected by this difficulty of establishing the right procedures will be able to get the path to follow.

This is a good bill, which we will support, and which once again calls for transparency and for a possible simplification of our tax regime. We will support this proposal.

Mrs. Speaker, dear colleagues, you will not be surprised that my appreciation of the rulings and of the role played by the Service for Early Decisions differs somewhat from that stated by Mr. Piedboeuf. We can, of course, cite the counter-example of the municipality of my colleague, who appeals to this service. Nevertheless, it is clear that this body does tax overmeasure, especially for large corporations and large fortunes, while the ordinary taxpayer is only entitled to the loan-to-tax.

Furthermore, we see a certain affinity of the members of the college leading the Service for Early Decisions with applicants. This proximity is expressed in particular through cruises on luxury yachts. Ultimately, the approval rate of the rulings reaches 98% of the tax arrangements submitted by multinationals. Subsequently, a tax inspector cannot question these decisions. Proof of this is that, in the two flagrant cases where the ISI did, it triggered a state affair leading to a project of reform of this service, on the grounds that the ISI had dared to challenge illegal rulings for amounts that exceeded the billion euros.

It is recalled that the LuxLeaks case that affected the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg concerned rulings. I remind you that it was in this room, in 2017, that the one who was still president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, had come to answer the questions of Belgian MPs. I just asked him about the LuxLeaks. What had he answered me? I reiterate the report, so as to be precise in Mr. Juncker’s remarks in order to defend myself against what I reproached him in the LuxLeaks matter on the part of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. “When I was a young finance minister (in Luxembourg, of course), many were those who knocked on my door to tell me, ‘If you don’t do this, we’re going to Belgium because the Belgians offered us this and that.’ So the tax gifts were offered by Belgium or by the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. It was the tax shopping that multinational companies could do.

This was about the rulings. What we are discussing here is a bill proposal not about rulings but about their transparency. Those who have had the opportunity to read the report will see that there is a very big difference between my intervention in the committee on 27 October 2020 and my intervention in the committee on 23 February 2021.

On 27 October 2020, I fully support this proposal by colleague Joris Vandenbroucke of sp.a, which aims to make transparency on rulings and which requires the publication of individual rulings, where it is known that the policy of the SDA in terms of publication, even though it is already obliged to do so by royal decree, is quite questionable. Total transparency is the least of the things that can be demanded from this system which is, in itself, already heavily questionable.

On 23 February 2021, I change my attitude because an amendment has been introduced, which seriously changes the original text. This amendment is co-signed by the Socialists and CD&V and follows the opinion of SPF Finances. In my opinion, it was imposed by the right-wing parties within the Vivaldi coalition, the CD&V and the liberals.

I will therefore rather address those right-wing parties, which imposed that the original text be modified strongly, which was very good. Ladies and gentlemen of the right, you have removed three essential elements from the original proposal.

First, the initial proposal provided that the text of the ruling itself should be made public. We bar the names but the rest is the ruling as the applicant received it. What remains of this? The amended proposal provides for the publication of not the text but a summary of the ruling. This is a first way to empty the content of the proposal.

Secondly, the initial proposal provided that all rulings would be published individually. The amended proposal allows the Early Decisions Service to collectively publish similar rulings. Sure, the wording is slightly different from the original text, but I fear that the Early Decisions Service retains the power to interpret what similar rulings are and uses that discretion to reduce transparency and avoid individual publications that would impose.

Third, the initial proposal emphasized the transparency of the rulings in the law. What is the amended proposal? It modifies a royal decree and allows the government to change the transparency rules in the future without going through Parliament.

You see that on the three essential elements of this bill, the amendments imposed by Vivaldi’s right-wing parties completely distorted the text and wiped it out of its substance.

In the committee, this led me to abstain from this text. Here, in the plenary session, at the reflection, we will vote for this text, because somewhere, its original intention was transparency. We want to support the intention of transparency. But at the same time, we maintain our conclusion that the original text has been completely empty of its substance. It is a reality that, under the pressure of the right-wing parties, we removed everything that bothered and we finally made a rather insignificant text, which will guarantee very little transparency.

Mr. Van Hees can’t help but make intention trials, as usual. The right has not pushed for anything. There were comments from the administration itself. Indeed, the administration has well understood the interest of transparency, which is to say the right, to try to constitute a jurisprudence in relation to decisions that are taken. This is the difference between the transparency of decisions that are made to make the right and unhealthy curiosity. In your case, this is an unhealthy curiosity. What you want to know is who has benefited from this. This is your problem! We want transparency so that law, and tax law in particular, is more easily applied. That is why we supported our colleague’s proposal. There was no pressure on us to make this amendment. It is the administration that, in order to be able to respond to the demand for transparency, felt that it was necessary to simplify rather than compel to make publications in extenso of the number of decisions that are taken, which you yourself denounce as being very high.

I have nothing to add to both the first and the second intervention of Benoît Piedboeuf. It can also be written on account of our group.

Mr. Peterson, I don’t quite understand your argument. You say it is unhealthy curiosity. However, it is clear in the bill that publication is anonymous. In doing so, I don’t understand why you’re talking about unhealthy curiosity.

The problem lies in the fact that when one does not publish a text as it has been rendered and makes a summary of it to remove the so-called principles of law, it is obviously possible to hide things that might be unconfessable. This makes you laugh! But when you see the decisions that have been made in cases like AB InBev, you can only be questioned. I am referring to one of the cases mentioned in the press. This information does not come from the report or website of the Early Decision Service. There are leaks in the press.

Furthermore, it is true that dubious policies in terms of conflict of interest of members of the College of the Service for Early Decisions exist. I will not mention cruises, participation in seminars, etc. I will also not recall the links that exist between the business world, multinational corporations and the political world. If we take the case of AB InBev, we know that a former prime minister was sitting in the board of directors. This is indeed a problem.

But, again, the discussion was not about lifting the anonymity, but about the publication of individual and in the full text of the set of decisions. This was the initial proposal of the sp.a. which was completely misrepresented by the right of this government.

We are not supporters of the tax voyeurism that Mr. Van Hees advocates.

As one speaker said, this is a simple bill, but a bill does not necessarily have to be a complicated phone book to be relevant and important. This is also the case for this bill, which is very relevant. It is about the system of tax rulings, about the possibility that a taxable person has to create clarity in advance in his tax situation and to avoid unpleasant surprises afterwards. We believe that this is an instrumentarium that ⁇ has its place in Belgian taxation. It also ensures that our country can be attractive to foreign investors who want to know in advance what they are about to do.

It is, of course, important that such an instrument can never be misused to make arbitrary decisions or to enable a certain preferential treatment. In order to avoid this, it is necessary that each taxable person can make sure which arrangements are made, in order to rely on them or not.

Therefore, in my bill, I propose, colleague Van Hees, that all these rulings be published individually. That was initially so, that is still so, and that will also be the result if it is approved. That is indeed the practice today, but it was not so until a few years ago. Consider the overwinstrulings or excess profit rulings. From this we know that they remained completely under the water line for five years and that they were only subsequently raised in the form of a collective publication in the annual report of the Pre-Decision Service. That collective publication shone out in general and was little informative. We must abstain from that practice, but the relevant law and especially the KB still leave that possibility open. Fortunately, the services of Mr Vanden Berghe have been publishing the rulings individually, in a correct way, for several years. We consider the legal anchoring of it important. Whatever you try to do, Mr. Van Hees, that is exactly the purpose of this bill.

We have indeed submitted a number of amendments and I thank my colleagues, both of the majority and of the opposition, and the Cabinet of the Minister for the constructive contribution to put this bill legally into effect.

As a result, the ruling office can only publish rulings individually, with one exception, namely when several rulings are agreed, which are completely identical except that of the applicant. Last year, for example, more than 1,000 identical rulings were agreed on, for example, the use of office equipment and for remote work. It would indeed be a form of administrative burden if all of them were published individually.

Mr. Van Hees, I read the report of the discussion of the bill again. You were indeed first in favour and then no longer, but I do not understand why. In the explanation of the bill, it has always been stated that the aim was nothing more than to legally anchor the existing practice of recent years and that is exactly what we are doing. We do this in a way as advised by the FOD Finance, namely to adjust the appropriate royal decision.

You add all sorts of elements, which we have never talked about, neither in the explanation nor in the bill itself. You give me all sorts of intentions that I didn’t have. If those fantasies are needed to make you change your mind, just do it. You keep turning around, we are moving forward with this coalition. Witness this bill and the bill that we will discuss as soon as possible.