STOP

48 • Fifty Shades of Tax Dodging
With Rwanda, Bermuda and Turkey, Belgium did finalise
negotiations aimed at aligning existing tax treaties to
include information exchange based on the OECD model
convention. 320 This was clearly a good step, but it also
represented a missed opportunity to debate Belgium’s tax
treaty policy more broadly, taking into account the need for
an idependent spillover analysis of current tax treaties on
developing countries’ tax base.
Financial and corporate transparency
Financial and corporate transparency is absent in the new
government’s coalition agreement. 321 Although Finance
Minister Johan Van Overtveldt (Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie
(N-VA)) emphasises that transparency is a key priority, 322 the
level of ambition from the Belgian government on this front
seems to be limited.
Public reporting for multinational corporations
Belgium has implemented the EU provision for public
country by country reporting for the financial sector. 323
Belgium has not yet defined its position on country by country
reporting for all sectors. 324 Instead it is waiting for the
results of the EU impact assessment of country by country
reporting and plans to carry out its own assessment to see
what this would mean for the national tax administration.
The main concerns for the government seem to be additional
administrative burdens and costs for companies. According
to the global audit firm EY, it is expected that Belgium will
implement country by country reporting along the lines
of the OECD’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS)
recommendation, 325 which seems to support the impression
of civil society: that the government prefers this option with
its confidential reporting format.
Based on information provided by the relevant authorities,
many aspects with regard to the implementation of the new
EU anti-money laundering directive remain undecided.
This is particularly the case on the question of public
access to the register of beneficial ownership information,
which according to the officials depend on “whether this is
considered OK from a privacy law perspective”, and that it
“still needs to be debated and legally analysed”. 328 A task
force on the implementation of the directive deciding on
these issues is yet to be set up. 329 On a more positive note,
however, there seems to be a clear commitment to a register
that will be technically as accessible and user friendly as
possible (online, in English, easily searchable and Excel
exportable). 330
EU solutions
Belgium is rarely a first mover on tax and transparency
issues at the EU level, as demonstrated by its lack of firm
positons on beneficial ownership transparency and public
country by country reporting. However, the government does
want to be seen as a loyal partner in implementing common
regulations.
Belgium supports the Commission’s proposal for a directive
on the automatic exchange of tax rulings and in June 2015,
announced that it will start exchanging its tax rulings already
from October 2015. 331 The Finance Minister has stated
that Belgium is less supportive of tax harmonisation than
of coordination in the EU, and also that the government
supports the Commission’s plans to revive the proposal for
a Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base in the EU (the
so-called CCCTB proposal). 332
Ownership transparency
A review of Belgium’s anti-money laundering framework by
the intergovernmental Financial Action Task Force (FATF)
in early 2015 noted considerable shortcomings. However, in
general it assessed Belgium to be compliant with standards
related to transparency and beneficial ownership information
registration. 326 Trusts cannot be created under Belgian law. 321