Daphne Foulkes’s findings come as advisers and pension fund administrators with clients who are tax resident in France have been seeking clarification from the French tax authorities as to whether non-French personal pension schemes are obliged to report under new disclosure requirements introduced by the Loi de Finances Rectificative pour 2011, which took effect on 31 July 2011.
The law introduced a range of measures that oblige trustees to report on the trust’s French assets, their French beneficiaries, and/or any French settlors.
Foulkes, an expert on pensions and trusts, said she found the “proof” buried in a French-language document sent to her by her French accountant, which she translated.
She stressed that other companies should obtain their own professional opinion on the matter before deciding whether or not to report to the authorities, but that in the absence of official clarification, the precision of the analysis of the Loi de Finances Rectificative, specifically as it pertained to trusts étrangers (foreign trusts), seemed compelling. The analysis was published by Editions Francis Lefebvre, a French legal publisher.
“To us, this seems to confirm our argument, that it is only the private family type of trust that was targeted by the legislation,” Foulkes said.
As reported here today, a Maltese pension industry organization, the Malta Association of Retirement Scheme Practitioners, has said its member companies should go ahead and file a “2181 TRUST 2” return to the French Tax Authorities, pending official clarification as to whether the new trust law affected personal pension schemes.
Others who have been left in the dark in the matter include advisers whose France-resident clients are not British, but of another nationality, but who also have non-French personal pensions – for example, Americans with 401Ks and IRAs.
The study Foulkes translated was an analysis of how foreign trusts are to be administered under the Loi de Finances Rectificative. It was written by Bruno Gouthière, a partner in the Neuilly-sur-Seine Cedex, France-based law firm CMS Bureau Francis Lefebvre.
Gouthière was not immediately available for comment.
