EU tax ministers made little progress this week in talks aimed at breaking the deadlock over the controversial savings tax plan

Date: 18/05/2000

The negotiations centred on how long any future withholding tax, if adopted by some Union countries, could co-exist with a system of information sharing between tax authorities in other member states. The UK insisted that any agreement must be subject to a 'sunset clause' - a fixed deadline after which all countries would move to a system of information exchange. Others, led by Luxembourg and Austria, which both have banking secrecy laws, continued to reject this approach.