On 23 October 2018, the Spanish government published a first draft of the law to implement the Spanish Financial Transactions Tax (FTT). On 15 November 2018, PensionsEurope answered to its consultation and e.g. warned that the FTT would be detrimental to pension savings. Your can read PensionsEurope answer here.

Besides the plans of the Spanish government to introduce a national FTT, the Austrian Presidency has put forward proposals to simplify and restrict the scope of the FTT being discussed by the remaining ten Member States considering the introduction of an EU wide FTT under the enhanced cooperation procedure. On 27 November 2018, PensionsEurope published a press release and e.g. stressed that PensionsEurope is against the establishment of taxes on financial transactions, since such taxes, in their various typologies, end up becoming taxes on savings or pensions, in addition to affecting the efficiency of markets and producing a relocation in the financing flows of the real economy, towards companies established in non-taxed jurisdictions.You can find PensionsEurope press release here.

AEIP and Pensions Europe have published a joint position paper calling for political action to relieve pension fund participants from unnecessary VAT burden for contracted management services. The current interpretation of the VAT Directive leads to different treatment of pension plans for VAT purposes based on the form and the place of residence of the plan. In addition, the current regime provides insufficient guidance for hybrid pension plans (e.g. DB pension funds, where all or part of the risk is shifted from the employer to the fund itself or the employee) which are becoming more commonplace. This means that similar pension schemes in different countries face different tax treatments concerning the management services they procure.  PensionsEurope and AEIP therefore call for a review of the VAT Directive that exempts all pension funds from paying VAT on management services. The press release is available here.