The Tax Information Exchange Agreement (Taxes on Income) (Netherlands Antilles) Order 2005

Annex Text of Article 7 of Directive 77/799/EEC of the Council of the European Union of 19th December, 1977 concerning mutual assistance by the competent authorities of the Member States in the field of direct taxation, certain excise duties and taxation of insurance premiums

“Provisions relating to secrecy

1.  All information made known to a Member State under this Directive shall be kept secret in that State in the same manner as information received under its national legislation. In any case, such information:

• may be made available only to the persons directly involved in the assessment of the tax or in the administrative control of this assessment,

• may be made known only in connection with judicial proceedings or administrative proceedings involving sanctions undertaken with a view to, or relating to, the making or reviewing the tax assessment and only to persons who are directly involved in such proceedings; such information may, however, be disclosed during public hearings or in judgements if the competent authority of the Member State supplying the information raises no objection at the time when it first supplies the information,

• shall in no circumstances be used other than for taxation purposes or in connection with judicial proceedings or administrative proceedings involving sanctions undertaken with a view to, or in relation to, the making or reviewing the tax assessment.In addition, Member States may provide for the information referred to in the first subparagraph to be used for assessment of other levies, duties and taxes covered by Article 2 of Directive 76/308/EEC(1).

2.  Paragraph 1 shall not oblige a Member State whose legislation or administrative practice lays down, for domestic purposes, narrower limits than those contained in the provisions of that paragraph, to provide information if the State concerned does not undertake to respect those narrower limits.

3.  Notwithstanding paragraph 1, the competent authorities of the Member State providing the information may permit it to be used for other purposes in the requesting State, if, under the legislation of the informing State, the information could, in similar circumstances, be used in the informing State for similar purposes.

4.  Where a competent authority of a Member State considers that information which it has received from the competent authority of another Member State is likely to be useful to the competent authority of a third Member State, it may transmit it to the latter competent authority with the agreement of the competent authority which supplied the information.

“PART II Exchange of Notes

Note from the United Kingdom

United Kingdom Permanent Representation To the European Union

The Permanent Representative

Sir John Grant KCMG

15 February 2005

Your Excellency,

I have the honour to refer to the texts of respectively the “Convention between the Kingdom of the Netherlands in respect of the Netherlands Antilles and (Belgium, Austria and Luxembourg) concerning the automatic exchange of information regarding savings income in the form of interest payments”, the “Convention between the Kingdom of the Netherlands in respect of the Netherlands Antilles and (the EU Member State, other than Belgium, Austria and Luxembourg) concerning the automatic exchange of information regarding savings income in the form of interest payments”, the “Convention between the Kingdom of the Netherlands in respect of Aruba and (the EU Member State, other than Belgium, Austria and Luxembourg) concerning the automatic exchange of information regarding savings income in the form of interest payments” and the “Convention between the Kingdom of the Netherlands in respect of Aruba and (Belgium, Austria and Luxembourg) concerning the automatic exchange of information regarding savings income in the form of interest payments”, that resulted from the negotiations with the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba on a Savings Tax Agreement, and that were annexed, respectively as Annex I, II, III and IV, to the Outcome of Proceedings of the High Level Working Party of the Council of Ministers of the European Union of 12 March (doc.7660/04 FISC 68).

In view of the above mentioned texts I have the honour to propose to you the “Convention concerning the automatic exchange of information regarding savings income in the form of interest payments” as contained in Appendix 1 to this letter, and our mutual undertaking to comply at the earliest possible date with our internal constitutional formalities for the entry into force of this Convention and to notify each other without delay when such formalities are completed.

Pending the completion of these internal procedures and the entry into force of this “Convention concerning the automatic exchange of information regarding savings income in the form of interest payments”, I have the honour to propose to you that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Kingdom of the Netherlands in respect of the Netherlands Antilles apply this Convention provisionally, so as far as is possible under their respective domestic constitutional requirements, as from 1 January 2005, or the date of application of Council Directive 2003/48/EC of 3 June 2003 on taxation of savings income in the form of interest payments, whichever is later.

I have the honour to propose that, if the above is acceptable to your Government, this letter together with its Appendix 1 and your confirmation to that effect shall together constitute an Agreement between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Kingdom of the Netherlands in respect of the Netherlands Antilles.

Please accept, Your Excellency, the assurance of my highest consideration,

(1)

OJ No. L73, 19.03.1976, p. 18.