Conséquences des échanges d'informations en application de la Directive 2011/16/UE, en lien avec l'imposition des revenus d'immeubles situés à l'étranger

Abstract

Within the European Union, taxpayers from different Member States have the freedom to move and carry out various financial transactions in the country of their choice. Knowing this, the different European countries needed to exchange information with each other about these financial movements and this is the reason why the Directive 2011/16/EU was put in place. In the context of this work, the legal framework surrounding this directive and the information exchange mechanisms that the directive established, will therefore be studied. Reports written by the European Commission will allow us to assess the effectiveness of its implementation in the different European countries. Furthermore, financial operations in foreign countries are synonymous with real estate investments, which is why it will be relevant to look at the Belgian system using the cadastral income attributed to real estate. It will therefore be useful to distinguish the situation before the law of the 17th February 2021, introducing the fixing of a cadastral income for real estate located outside the Belgian territory, and the situation resulting from the implementation of this law. Once the theoretical part will have been explained, we will move on to the empirical part of this work, which will provide a practical perspective on these two fundamental mechanisms, namely the foreign cadastral income and the Directive 2011/16/EU. For this purpose, three interviews were conducted, which will allow us to learn more about the processing and use of the exchanged data by the Belgian tax administration, as well as the establishment of the foreign cadastral income.