Luxembourg rated as “Largely Compliant” by the OECD Global Forum

On 30 October 2015, the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes published a supplementary peer review report for Luxembourg.

Luxembourg, which was rated “Non-Compliant” in November 2013, has since implemented a number of recommendations made by the Global Forum, leading to an upgrade of its overall rating to “Largely Compliant”.

Since its commitment to the international standards of exchange of information in 2009, Luxembourg quickly moved ahead toward greater tax transparency. To name few recent actions, Luxembourg was one of the first countries to join the discussions on the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) initiatives in 2013, it also entered into an intergovernmental agreement with the Unites States regarding Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) in 2014 and introduced an automatic exchange of information on savings income as from January 2015. Luxembourg is listed as an early adopter of CRS, committed to perform an automatic exchange of information in 2017 based on reportable information from 2016.

After years of finger-pointing against Luxembourg regarding the exchange of information, this change is a strong and positive sign to the market and Luxembourg now has the same rating as, for example, the United States, Germany, the Netherlands or Italy.