The European Court of Justice has been labouring the point that
once there is "liberalised" information flow between both EEA and
third countries, i.e. Switzerland, that for the tax viewpoint,
there should be no adverse fiscal discrimination.
A Swiss lawyer has also pointed out, inconveniently for Brussels
and Paris, that once there is freedom of movement of fiscal
information there should also be a correspondingly unrestricted
access to EU capital markets, and therefore to market into the
markets in which those responsible in the place of establishment of
the capital structures are required to give foreign
information:
"À quoi bon donner des
informations sur des clients
si on n'a pas d'accès au marché du
pays d'où ils viennent?»
The trite and slightly witless counter proposition aside that,
if you have their investment, you already have "access", the French
will now have to revisit the inevitable debate which they had with
the Danes upon whether pension capital constitiued under an EU
Member State's law by a national of a Member State in their prior
state of residence will retain the legal structure and principles
upon which it was constituted. In other words for example,
Trusts, which they attempt to requalify fiscally as contracts; or
accept simply that a foreigner, from the EU or otherwise retiring
to France has the right to the legal and fiscal respect of the form
and substance of the arrangements instigated prior to their arrival
in France and which should govern the foreign currency, whether
anothee Central Bank's Euro or a third currency, issued
against them by the central bank of constitution. The host
state will otherwise fiscally and monetarily "embezzle" the capital
as opposed to merely arbitrating over the income. In other words
the counter argument is deflected towards another issue, not the
real one.
Put bluntly, are we still in the ridiculous position where the
French can assert their belief that they can simply requalify
perfectly legitimate structures established abroad prior to any
French connection being made, in the way that they see fit, and
then double up the effcetive currency exposures over the same
capital? In other terms, issuing their Euros against another
state's currency "assets", in this case sterling.
They accept that they cannot charge recent immigrants to ISF or
succession or gift duty on foreign assets until after a certain
lapse of time, so they are aware of the movement issue. But
does that give any Member State the right to requaliify a
legitimate capital ownership and property structure in another
Member State or elsewhere? No it does not, that is one of the
pillars of the Capital Moevement freedom.
The French administration's current position of giving an
informal "let off" and in fact exempting UK self funded pension
plans such as SIPPs of any shape or form from the Trusts deeming
provisions, evidences that this is a point to push home.
Watch this space.