Overseas Chambers of Peter Harris

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Legality of use of fiscal information to constitute French register of Trusts challenged before Conseil d'Etat

July 7th 2016

An American citizen resident in France has contested the legality of the use of confidential information filed with the French tax administration to constitute and inform the Regster of Trusts on line since 4th July, 2016.

Perhaps it is about time that the anarchic streak inculcated in the education of ENArques now be reined in and brought back to some form of legal order.

There are two procedures: one which, if successful, will have the effect of suspending the Register and possibly having the decree cancelled;  the second will not have any interlocutory effect, but if successful will enable the matter to go before the constitutional court. Seeing the composition of this venerated establishment, it is unlikely that any attempt will be made to respect the laws and practices of any other jurisdiction: Mssrs. Fabius and Jospin are not known for intellectual integrity and respect for principles which are not their own. Those in Paris in the 1980s will remember Fabius' contemptible methodology of denial of reality and fact in matters of contaminated blood transfusion.

The avocate respresenting the client indicates that the information on the Register is about trusts which have been declared and are in order - en règle. If the aim of the decree is to aid in the abstract and idealised struggle - lutte - against non-declaration and evasion, then it does seem to be shooting itself in both feet, and not availing such a hypothetical struggle!

Why render public  the names of those who are declared correctly - that is if you still believe that the French deeming mechanisms are actually correct and justified when appied to non-grantor trust arrangements such as English Trusts? The French legislation is completely out of touch with legal reality, and has become a diabolical Frankenstein.

Hopefully this American claim will undo the nut and loosen the bolt in the neck of this ridiculous fiscal Frankenstein formulated by civil servants who are entirely out of touch with the law and reality, saving through the files that come to their attention.

The irony is that one of the Fonctionnaires responsible for this travesty resigned from the adminstration recently and has moved to a law office in New York, where he can base his practice on the equivalences between the American Grantor Trust and  the monstrosity of universal application which he has created. He probably felt that he might be made to feel out of place in London. The moral of the story being that one needs to take one's civil service pension and supplement it on solid revenue streams rather than on those open to contestation if one wishes to live modestly, if not comfortably abroad ...

See: http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2016/07/05/le-registre-public-des-trusts-lance-par-la-france-conteste-devant-le-conseil-d-etat_4964235_3234.html#IDCm1vzLcXblhltw.99