16
May

The European Court of Justice issued its decision in the judgement, Berlioz Investment Fund SA v Directeur de l’Administration des Contributions directes (C-682/15), on the 16th of May 2017.

The CJEU found the Luxembourg company, Berlioz Investment Fund SA, is able to depend on the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights to challenge

1. the penalty arising Luxemburg for not supplying the information required due to a demand by the French tax authorities to the Luxembourg tax authorities, under Council Directive of 15^th February 2011 on administrative cooperation in the field of taxation and
2. the legitimacy of this request.

In this judgement, the CJEU held that when a tax authority which accepts an information request from a different tax authority, it is obligatory to examine whether the information required has ‘foreseeable relevance’ and that the domestic courts have jurisdiction to supervise that procedure.

The European Court found that compliance with the ‘foreseeable relevance’ standard is a requirement of the legitimacy of the information order to the applicable individual and hence similarly it is also a requirement for a penalty to be enforced on such individual for the failure to conform with that information order.

Read more here: //eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A62015CJ0682