The disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is hampering the timely compliance of financial institutions and of the persons responsible for reporting cross-border arrangements, and is having a negative effect on the capacity of Member States' tax administrations to collect and process the data. 

In consideration of this issue, the European Commission has published a proposal for a Council Directive to amend Directive 2011/16/EU on administrative cooperation 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"). 

With respect to DAC6 which will enter into force on 1 July 2020:

  • 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 different from 31 August 2020 to 30 November 2020. 
  • The date for the beginning of the period of 30 days for filing information on Reportable cross-border arrangements whose triggering events occurr between 1 July 2020 and 30 September 2020, will be 1 October 2020.
  • In the case of marketable arrangements, the first periodic report must be made by 31 January 2021.

For more information on DAC6, please refer to our newsletters dated 13 August 2019 and 23 March 2020.

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

For more information, please refer to our Article dated 8 June 2020.

With respect to DAC2:

The Commission proposes to defer the time limit for the exchange of information on Reportable Financial Accounts by 3 months, i.e. until 31 December 2020.

Depending on the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic, the proposed Directive provides for the possibility to extend, once only, and to a maximum of 3 additional months, the deferral period for the filing and exchange of information.

Originally published 08.05.2020

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