The EU's Economic and Financial Affairs Council (Ecofin) is meeting on Monday and Tuesday next week. As they note:
The Council will hold a policy debate on the taxation of savings interest. A report will be made to the Council about taxation of the financial sector.
That is, of course, a debate on reform of the European Union Savings Tax Directive. My sources tell me that Ecofin have given top priority to getting this reform approved this month. Hungary is the current president, and has done its utmost to get the required unanimous approval from the 27 EU Member States.
There is no guarantee that this issue will progress as desired, but to say that it is on the back burner is also completely wrong. The vast majority of European states want the extension of the EU Savings Tax Directive, and rightly so. Tax cheats should not prosper in a free market. If they do, there's no such thing as a free market. There is just a market free riders. And that something very different.
It is for precisely this reason that Savings Tax Directive reformers so heavily opposed by places like the Channel Islands, who will be directly impacted by it. They exist to promote economic free riding. The rest of us pay the price.
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There has been some discussion that the current transitory withholding regime for Luxembourg and Austria will be made permanent. If this is the case, chances are that an agreement will be reached, and this is good news since the current EUSD is simply a joke.
If on the other hand the Commission and some member states continue to demand automatic exchange from these two countries, there will be no progress.
Now it’s general news.