Publication
Major overhaul to environmental legislation: What does it mean for you?
Penalties for many environmental crimes will double under the Environment Protection Legislation Amendment (Stronger Regulation and Penalties) Bill 2024.
Author:
Global | Publication | November 2018
On November 22, 2018, the Dutch Secretary of Finance sent a letter to parliament laying out his proposal for a new Dutch international tax ruling regime. The current regime was last overhauled in 2004 with the introduction of Advance Pricing Agreements (APA) and Advance Tax Rulings (ATR), both being handled by a centralized unit of the Dutch tax authorities based in Rotterdam. The reform is based on input from independent experts and following from an internet consultation round launched in July of this year. The goal of the currently announced changes is to “secure the quality and to increase its robustness of the ruling practice for businesses with real economic activities”. Changes to the ruling regime will be proposed dealing with (A) transparency of the rulings, (B) internal process for issuing rulings and (C) the content of the rulings.
Under the OECD BEPS project, transparency has been a key issue in the OECD’s efforts to combat aggressive tax planning and tax evasion, with the exchange of information on tax rulings being one of the key deliverables. The same push for transparency can also be found in the efforts of the European Union and its state aid procedures. Although not mentioned in the letter, the current efforts of the Dutch government seem to be partially related to these processes. The government proposes three changes to the ruling regime to increase transparency:
The changes to the ruling practice are amongst others driven by the government’s desire to combat aggressive tax planning and tax evasion. One of the key concerns is the creation of letter box companies that are primarily established in the Netherlands for tax reasons. In light of this, the government proposes the following changes to the ruling practice:
The changes will be explained and included into policy documents in the course of next year. These policy documents (including more examples on economic nexus) will be made public and broadly displayed so that the new ruling policies will be easily accessible and clear for everybody. The aim is to have the new ruling policy enter into force on July 1, 2019.
We recommend reviewing ruling requests in light of these changes, as additional requirements may need to be complied with when tax payers are (i) requesting extensions of existing rulings but also (ii) discussing new or even pending ruling requests. We are obviously more than happy to assist you in reviewing and advising you on your existing, pending and new structures and requests.
Publication
Penalties for many environmental crimes will double under the Environment Protection Legislation Amendment (Stronger Regulation and Penalties) Bill 2024.
Publication
On March 13, the Canadian Sustainability Standards Board (CSSB) published two Canadian sustainability standard exposure drafts – CSDS 1, General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-related Financial Information and CSDS 2, Climate-related Disclosures (Draft Canadian Standards).
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