The Central Point of Contact (“CPC”), which is held by the National Bank of Belgium, is a register of bank accounts and financial contracts.
At present, the CPC includes information about bank accounts held in Belgium by both resident and non-resident natural and legal persons, and about bank accounts held abroad by Belgian resident natural persons.
In future, this register will also contain information about life insurance contracts with Belgian companies or foreign insurance companies that operate in Belgium.
Tax authorities are empowered to consult the CPC especially if there are indications of tax fraud.
The information communicated to CPC will mainly relate to branch 21, 23 or 26 insurance contracts and will include the following:
The policyholder’s identity
The existence and signing date of the contract
The contract closing date or the date of its possible transfer.
Such information also applies to existing contracts and should be communicated to the CPC from 1 August 2019. Nevertheless, the law allows the government to reduce or extend this deadline by up to six months.
Only insurance companies (and not policyholders, for example) must provide this information, but they should also inform their clients.
The information given to the CPC will be kept for 10 years.
Insurance companies not complying with this new obligation risk severe sanctions (EUR 50,000 to 1,000,000 administrative fines, which could be doubled if the offence recurs within two years).
Taxpayers will be able to obtain a list of the data registered in their name at the CPC.
This new obligation of communication is in addition to the 2013 obligation on natural person taxpayers to declare in their tax return any life insurance contracts executed abroad.
Lida Achtari, Associate, lida.achtari@cms-db.com
Olivier Querinjean, Partner, olivier.querinjean@cms-db.com
