What is the Savings Tax Directive?
– The European Union Savings Tax Directive (STD), which came into effect on 1st July, 2005, in fact forms merely one part of a major tax reform package launched by the European Commission in 1997. As originally drafted, the STD aimed at a uniform ‘information exchange’ regime to apply across the Union, with all countries agreeing to report interest on savings paid to the citizens of other Member States to those States’ tax authorities. Because of resistance from EU Member States with strong traditions of banking secrecy, the Commission had to allow Austria, Luxembourg and Belgium to apply a withholding tax (at 15%) until 2009. Many of the UK’s offshore financial centres have been forced to join the STD, along with the Netherlands Antilles, Aruba and some European centres (Andorra, Monaco, Liechtenstein and San Marino). Most of these places have also taken the withholding tax route, as will Switzerland, which was the hardest nut for the EU to crack. The STD applies to many types of retu
