France to raise taxes on funds transferred to tax havens
PARIS (Bloomberg) — France plans to raise taxes on funds transferred to tax havens and on dividends coming from these jurisdictions, to conform with a Group of 20 plan to crack down on countries that don't comply with global tax standards.
The levy on some payments of dividends, interest and royalties by French entities to residents of non-cooperative territories, which ranged from zero to 33 percent, will be raised to 50 percent, the government said yesterday in a statement in Paris.
The government also said it will reduce some tax breaks for transactions with tax havens and add systems to fight tax evasion. It will eliminate tax breaks on dividends paid to parent companies by subsidiaries based in tax havens, and require more transparency in transactions involving French companies.
G-20 leaders made cracking down on tax havens a key element of combating the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development publishes a "grey list" of countries that haven't implemented international agreements on exchange of information on request in tax matters.
France plans to apply the measures, which will be debated in Parliament, over the next two years to non-European Union countries that belong to the OECD's "grey list" or to those which haven't signed an agreement with France to exchange bank-account and taxpayer data. Bermuda signed a tax-information exchange agreement with France last month and is on the OECD's "white list" of countries seen to be complying with international tax transparency standards.
