Luxembourg's Ministry of Finance has informed of the proposal for a European Commission directive aimed at postponing certain deadlines for declaration and exchange of information in tax matters due to the crisis related to COVID-19.
Negotiations in the European Council on this proposal for a directive have progressed rapidly in recent weeks and a compromise has been reached following the Coreper meeting on 3 June 2020. This will give Member States the option to postpone for three months the deadlines for the communication of information provided for in an EU directive introduced by DAC 2 with regard to data for the year 2019, as well as six months for the deadlines for communication and exchange of information provided for by DAC 6.
Provided that the Council formally endorses this proposal, the amending directive in question will be published in the coming weeks in the Official Journal of the European Union. On this basis, and following the notification to the Coordinating Body of the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters (MCAA) to temporarily modify the notification, the Luxembourg government will introduce a bill as soon as possible to make the corresponding necessary changes to the amended law of 18 December 2015 relating to the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) as well as to the law of 25 March 2020 on cross-border arrangements which must be declared. At the same time, the bill in question will also introduce a three-month extension of the deadline for transmitting information to the amended law of 24 July 2015 relating to FATCA.
Until these legislative adaptations can come into force, the sanctions for late transmission of information set out in the three aforementioned laws will not be applied.
