DAC6 reporting obligation deferred by 6 months

As previously mentioned in our article dated 8 May 2020, the European Commission has tabled a proposal for a Council Directive amending Directive 2011/16/EU allowing the deferral of certain time limits for filing and exchanging information on financial accounts under Directive 2014/107/EU (i.e. so called “DAC2”/CRS) and on reportable cross-border arrangements under Directive 2018/822/EU (i.e. so called “DAC6”) in consideration of the disruptions caused by the Covid-19 crisis.

This proposal, however, required further discussion at EU level. 

Finally, on June 3, 2020, Member State representatives on Coreper (the Permanent Representatives Committee) reached political agreement for an optional six-month deferral of reporting deadlines under DAC6.

This was confirmed by the Luxembourg Ministry of Finance through a statement released on its website on 4 June 2020. 

This would mean in practice that (i) the deadline for the reporting of the ‘historical’ cross-border arrangements (i.e. cross-border arrangements the first step of which was implemented between 25 June 2018 and 30 June 2020) will be deferred from 31 August 2020 to 28 February 2021 and (ii) the date for the beginning of the period of 30 days for filing information on Reportable cross-border arrangements whose triggering events occur between 1 July 2020 and 31 December 2020, will be 1 January 2021.

The 3-month deferral for DAC2 initially proposed by the European Commission on 8 May 2020, is maintained. 

According to the Luxembourg Ministry of Finance’s statement, the Luxembourg government will present a draft law modifying the CRS law and the DAC 6 law in accordance with this proposal as soon as possible. The draft law would also modify the FATCA law to postpone the reporting deadline for the year 2019 by 3 months.

Finally, the Luxembourg Ministry of Finance clarifies that, pending the approval of the draft law mentioned above, penalties for late filing of relevant information under the laws of DAC2, DAC6 and FATCA will not apply.