FINANCE COUNCIL: EU FINANCE MINISTERS IRON OUT TAX PACKAGE TIMETABLE.

The package is made up of the Commission's May 1998 proposal to ensure a minimum of effective taxation of cross-border interest on savings paid from one Member State to individuals resident in another Member State, the Code of Conduct for business taxation and the March 1998 proposal for a Directive to scrap withholding taxes on payments of interest and royalties made between directly associated companies in different Member States. As regards the savings taxation proposal itself, the Council agreed on the definition of the main issues constituting the "substantial content" of the proposal which should be agreed by the end of this year and a timetable for Council working group meetings to discuss these issues. The main points that have been agreed so far are that the Directive should ensure that all citizens resident in an EU Member State should pay the tax due on all their savings income by means of exchange of information between national tax authorities. But for a seven-year interim period, Austria and Luxembourg could apply a withholding tax (at a rate yet to be decided) on income from savings books held by residents of other EU countries. Belgium, Greece and Portugal have an option to do this, but must decide before the end of 2000 if they want to exercise that right.The newly-arrived French Presidency had already prepared a framework paper on the practicalities of Member States adopting a single, new Directive, in response to the half-deal hammered out by EU Finance Ministers a month ago on the eve of the Feira Summit. The Summiteers had invited the Finance Council "to pursue with determination work on all parts of the tax package".The Council...