EFAMA commented on the current VAT rules for financial services and their functioning, as well as on possible changes to these rules, in a public consultation of the European Commission.
EFAMA discusses all relevant tax topics with importance to the European asset management industry, such as Tax transparency packages or EU FTT, OECD topics including several actions inserted in the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project, and all kinds of national developments in case they have an impact on regulated EU investment funds. The focus lays on mainstream funds but we may discuss alternative investment fund tax-related issues, if they are of broad relevance.
EFAMA commented on the current VAT rules for financial services and their functioning, as well as on possible changes to these rules, in a public consultation of the European Commission.
The Commission launched a public consultation ahead of the presentation of a legislative proposal to introduce an EU Digital Levy by January 2023. For EFAMA, any new tax legislation on “digital activities” (or “digital transactions”) should not be borne by the end-investors. Our understanding is that the industry’s activities should not be in scope of the new tax.
The fund and asset management industry is a highly regulated industry operating under significant and specific legal, regulatory, transfer pricing and tax frameworks.
Pillar 1: Investment funds are structured as tax neutral investment pooling vehicles as a matter of
public policy.
Pillar 2: The role that investment funds play in providing investors with a diversified portfolio and global market access is essential.
The Commission aims to present a legislative proposal to address the tax-induced debt-equity bias, also to support the action plan for the Capital Markets Union and to encourage companies to finance their investment through equity contributions rather than through debt financing.
The Commission is trying to understand how the EU legal framework could be improved to tackle the use of legal entities with no or minimum substance and no real economic activities, by taxpayers operating cross-border to reduce their tax liability.
EFAMA replied to IASB’s Request for Information on the Post-Implementation Review of IFRS 10, 11 and 12. We are delighted to see an investment entity within the funds industry being acknowledged and catered for in IFRS. The development of the consolidation standards was a very welcomed development in the asset management world.
"It gives me great pleasure to provide you with an overview of our activities since our Annual General Meeting in Paris last year. While we were very much looking forward to hosting you all in Brussels this week, the current crisis and associated travel restrictions has forced us to improvise and turn our meeting into a virtual AGM.
The EFAMA Asset Management in Europe report aims at providing facts and figures to gain a better understanding of the role of the European asset management industry. It takes a different approach from that of the other EFAMA research reports, on two grounds. Firstly, this report does not focus exclusively on investment funds, but it also analyses the assets that are managed by asset managers under the form of discretionary mandates. Secondly, the report focuses on the countries where the investment fund assets are managed rather than on the countries in which the funds are domiciled.