Draft Double Taxation Relief and International Tax Enforcement (Luxembourg) Order 2022

James Murray Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2022 General Committees

[James Murray (Ealing North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve on this Committee with you as Chair, Ms McVey, and I thank the Minister for her opening remarks. I am pleased to respond briefly on behalf of the Opposition.

As we heard from the Minister, the statutory instrument gives relief from double taxation in relation to capital gains tax, corporation tax, income tax and taxes of a similar character imposed by the laws of Luxembourg, as well as relating to international tax enforcement. As we can see, the schedule introduced by the order is largely technical in nature. It follows an approach that is consistent with similar bilateral agreements with other states and territories, and we will not oppose the order. It is important that bilateral agreements concerning taxation are clear.

We also welcome the objective of this double taxation treaty, which the explanatory memorandum makes clear is to

“protect the Exchequer by including provisions to combat tax avoidance and evasion.”

These provisions include

“measures providing for the exchange of information between revenue authorities”,

in order to

“make it more difficult for residents of both territories to evade taxation by concealing assets offshore.”

As the Minister knows from her time in office, the Opposition have been pushing her and her colleagues at every turn to do more to tackle evasion and avoidance. We have pushed them to implement the global minimum corporation tax rate that the OECD and G20 recently agreed, which the Minister mentioned in her speech. Therefore, I will use this opportunity to ask the Minister briefly about the implementation of the OECD agreement.

On 20 July this year, the Treasury published draft legislation that would introduce the new so-called multinational top-up tax. Can the Minister simply confirm whether the new Prime Minister tomorrow will support this legislation? If she cannot confirm that, will she join me in urging the new Prime Minister to continue with this legislation?

[Lucy Frazer]

I am happy to respond to the hon. Gentleman and I am very pleased to see him after the break. Of course he will realise that as the Prime Minister has just been appointed as the leader of the Conservative party and is yet to go to see the Queen, it would be a little bit premature to set out her plans.