欧盟利息税协调中受益所有人认定及反滥用案评析

A Case Study on the Beneficial Owner Identification and Anti-Abuse Measures in the EU Interest Tax Harmonization

自2003年欧盟《利息税指令》出台以来,关于欧盟法层面上的受益所有人概念及该指令反滥用的法律适用问题,长期以来并不明确。丹麦东部高等法院为解决案件审理中遇到的这一问题,于2016年请求欧洲法院对编号C115/16等案件进行先行裁决。不同于佐审官认为受益所有人的认定应以"民法请求权的享有"为原则,欧洲法院2019年2月26日判决认为,解释应遵循OECD税收协定范本的规定,从经济实质层面认定受益所有人。对税收协定滥用认定,判决从利息转移、税基侵蚀、事实经济性活动等方面规定了客观化的标准,为利息税的协调提供了更多法律确定性。对我国而言,企业须关注判决对欧盟外投资者免税利益获取的不利认定倾向,同时当汲取欧盟利息税协调的制度经验,以助益于"一带一路"多边税收协调机制建构。

Since the introduction of the Directive 2003/49/EC,the concept of the beneficial owner at the EU law level and the application of anti-abuse measures in this Directive have long been unclear.In order to solve such legal problems,the eastern high court of Denmark requested the European Court of Justice to make an advance ruling on cases(one of which is numbered C 115/16)in 2016.Different from the advocate general who believed that the beneficial owner identification should be based on the principle of"the enjoyment of the civil-law claim",the European Court of Justice ruled on 26 February 2019 that the interpretation should follow the provisions of OECD Model Tax Convention and the beneficial owner should be determined at the economic substance level.To judge the abuse of tax treaties,the judgment established some objective criteria including interest transfer,tax base erosion and actual economic activities,which provides more legal certainty for the harmonization of interest tax in the EU.For China,enterprises must pay attention to the unfavorable tendency of ECJ’s judgments on giving taxfree benefits to foreign investors in the EU.At the same time,we should learn from the institutional experience of EU interest tax harmonization to help the construction of the "Belt and Road" multilateral tax harmonization mechanism.