Survival of the Richest

Slovenia
Transparency
Public country by country reporting
Slovenia has not yet legislated an obligation on nonpublic
CBCR for multinational companies with an annual
consolidated turnover of at least €750 million, but plans to
do so in the near future. 683
Slovenia supports the European Commission’s proposal for
public country by country reporting within the EU and socalled
non-cooperative jurisdictions as it aims towards “more
transparency, fairer competition and general fight against tax
avoidance and aggressive tax planning”. 684 However, there is no
indication that the government would be willing to push for full
public CBCR, i.e. to include reporting from all countries where
multinationals have economic activities. In fact, when full
public country by country reporting was discussed in the EU
(as part of the Shareholders’ Rights Directive), the government
said that they do not support full country by country reporting.
The government also considers that the proposed threshold
for reporting (€750 million turnover) is suitable and is not
considering any other options at the moment. 685
Ownership transparency
The new Anti-Money Laundering Act, transposing the 4th
Anti-Money Laundering Directive, was passed on 20 October
2016, published in the Official Gazette eight days later, and
came into force 15 days after. 686 It establishes a public registry
of beneficial owners (for the first time in Slovenia). 687 In
addition to beneficial owners of companies, the registry also
covers beneficial owners of foreign funds, foreign institutions
or similar foreign law entities (which would include trusts),
whenever these entities generate a tax obligation in Slovenia. 688
The purpose of public information is to provide a higher level
of legal security when entering into business relations, the
security of legal transactions, the integrity of the business
environment and transparency of business relationships with
individuals or commercial entities that operate in the business
environment and legal transactions. 689
The legislation concerning the register is similar to that of
the Land Registry Act. 690 This means that while the registry
is public it will not enable searching by a personal name, will
not follow open data standards and the database will not be
available to download. This makes the Slovenian register
more difficult to use than, for example, the UK register. 691
The new Anti-Money Laundering Act 692 also states that the
legal persons will submit data in the register and are liable
for that data, but there will be no verification of it. Not having
an open data register increases the risk that data will not be
accurate as civil society actors, journalists and others will
not be able to analyse the database properly. 693
If, during the general administrative procedure, the Office
for Money Laundering Prevention decides that the person or
organisation demonstrates a ‘legitimate interest’ it may allow
them access to the beneficial ownership information which is
not publicly available (date of birth and nationality). 694
The law includes the fall back option of listing a person
holding a senior management position in cases where the
real beneficial owner has not been identified. 695
According to the 2015 Financial Secrecy Index, Slovenia
has the 2nd lowest level of financial secrecy out of the 18
countries included in this report (ranked at number 88 at the
global level). 696 In other words, Slovenia has very low levels
of financial secrecy.
Taxation
Tax treaties
Slovenia ratified a new treaty with Kazakhstan 697 in March
2016 and the government is currently negotiating a new
treaty with Mexico. 698 The government also states that it
plans to negotiate or conclude new treaties with developing
countries within the next five years, but that the list of
countries is not publicly available. 699
Slovenian tax treaties in general follow the OECD model,
and the treaties with developing countries do not include
any anti-abuse clauses. The government does not plan to
conduct a spillover analysis to assess the impacts of its
treaties on developing countries. 700
At the moment, Slovenia has 21 tax treaties with developing
countries, which is the lowest number of treaties among the
countries covered in this report. The average reduction of tax
rates within those treaties – 3.7 percentage points – is slightly
below average (3.8 percentage points). 701 Slovenia does not
have any tax treaties that stand out as ‘very restrictive’. 702
Harmful tax practices
So far, Slovenia has been one out of a handful of EU countries
not providing so-called advance pricing agreements
(or ‘sweetheart deals’). The authorities do, however,
provide other forms of tax rulings such as non-binding
clarifications. 703 With new amendments to the Tax Procedure
Act, it will be possible for companies to request advance
pricing agreements in Slovenia from 1 January 2017. 704
A study on aggressive tax planning structures
commissioned by the European Commission found eleven
indicators in Slovenia, which is above the EU average of
10.6. Among the indicators, the vast majority are lack of
anti-abuse measures. Slovenia does not have a patent box
or any other active indicators. 705
88 • Survival of the Richest