On 23 March 2017, the Belgian Council of Ministers approved a draft bill which implements the multilateral competent authority agreement on the automatic exchange of financial account information (“the Agreement”) that was developed by the OECD and the G-20 countries and published in 2014.
On 29 October 2014, Belgium had, together with 50 other jurisdictions, signed the Agreement in Berlin in the framework of the OECD Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (“BEPS”) Action Plan.
The Agreement specifies what information will be exchanged automatically and when, as set out in the OECD’s standard for automatic exchange of financial account information in tax matters. In addition, the Agreement imposes strict confidential requirements in respect of the exchanged information. As a next step, the draft bill will be introduced into the Belgian Parliament for approval.
Read the press release of the Belgian Council of Ministers here (French/Dutch). Further information on the Belgian transfer pricing documentation and reporting requirements can be found here.
