We talked today about the importance of substance
in governance from a tax, legal and regulatory
point of view and the implications for the
Luxembourg financial services industries at
large: funds, insurance, banking, fin-tech.
We also looked at the potential misalignment
of the current tax treatment of directors,
the susceptibility of regimes to sanctioning
with the importance of the sector.
Hence the importance of substance: substance
means people, people means directors, directors
means carrying out these functions and there
needs to be a tax treatment.
Now we know that this tax treatment is no
longer aligned because it’s an old regime
and is no longer aligned with the reality
of the financial services industry today.
So we believe that this needs to be changed,
we think that our political leaders do not
understand the importance of the relationship
between substance, our financial services
industry and directors and how they need to
work together to make it stronger.
We are presenting this bigger picture here
to show how this is all connected and how
this connectivity needs to be better aligned,
so there are certain changes that should be
implemented.
This is an election year and as a result political
decision-makers need to look into this, they
need to focus on this because the most important
economy activity in the country is tied and
linked to this and so it cannot be that there
are misalignments in a strategically important
sector.
So that’s why, it’s election time this
year and political leaders need to listen
and need to take these points on board.
