Legal news

The recent governmental proposals on amendments to the procedure governing direct taxation litigation in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg

Article in PDF format by clicking here On 28 March 2023, the Finance Ministry sent Bill No. 8186, the provisions of which are aimed at amending and modernizing certain procedural aspects of direct taxation dispute resolution (the "Bill"). The following amendments merit being emphasized. 1) The complaint procedure before the Direct Tax Administration (Administration des Contributions Directes or "ACD") The Bill provides for a partial overhaul of the procedure for complaints against tax assessment notices (bulletins d’imposition) by amending the general taxation law (Loi générale des impôts "Abgabenordnung" or "AO"). The contents of the complaint are based on that for ...
May 3rd, 2023| Legal news

ALTO, compliance self-assessment tools from the CNPD

The National Data Protection Commission (CNPD) has announced that it will soon propose a new support tool to assist SMEs in their conformity with data protection regulations. The tool, ALTO, will allow SMEs to carry out a simple and free-of-charge self-assessment regarding GDPR issues. In the first phase, the CNPD has launched a survey to identify the needs of Luxembourg SMEs and will then develop a toolbox based on the results obtained. To participate in the survey, click here: https://alto.nc3.lu/ In the second phase, the CNPD will propose to the SMEs to use a pilot version of ALTO to test ...
April 3rd, 2023| Legal news

Pacta sunt servanda or the risk of becoming a victim of one’s own law

The difficulties of the current economic context will have escaped no one, and certainly not real estate professionals. The prices of materials are increasing considerably, their delivery times are getting longer, shortages, both real and artificial, are legion... and with that, the conditions for the performance of contracts are becoming more complicated. Numerous are the companies have just discovered that no matter how difficult the performance of a contract may be in private markets, [1]  the law does not, in principle, allow them to impose a renegotiation on their co-contractors, regardless of the extent of the economic disruption encountered. Similarly, ...
March 22nd, 2023| Legal news

Luxembourg: Recent legal developments in Real Estate

Introduction The Luxembourg legislator and administration have brought several legislative changes impacting the real estate industry in Luxembourg, and further legal initiatives have been announced in draft bills. The Luxembourg Constitutional Court also issued an important decision. Recent changes in laws and regulations 1. Tax regime amendments (i) 20% Real Estate Levy On 20 January 2022, the Luxembourg tax authorities released a new Circular regarding the “20% Real Estate Levy” introduced by the Luxembourg law of December 19, 2020, effective from 1 January  2021. The 20% Real Estate Levy must be declared and paid to the Luxembourg tax authorities by ...
March 16th, 2023| Legal news

533 Luxembourg Serveurs vulnerable to cyberattacks linked to Microsoft Exchange

The Computer Incident Response Center Luxembourg (CIRCL) recently published a report warning against the exploitation of vulnerabilities linked to Microsoft Exchange. The attackers can access confidential information of an enterprise, including e-mails, calendars and contacts. Numerous enterprises have not yet installed the Microsoft Exchange updates necessary to avoid those vulnerabilities, something which exposes them to heightened risks. The Financial Sector Surveillance Commission (CSSF) also published an article to alert the public of these risks and invite enterprises to take the appropriate security measures. It is thus crucial that Luxembourg companies take the necessary measures to protect their sensitive data by ...
February 24th, 2023| Legal news

European Union publication of the new list of non-cooperative jurisdictions – tax implications in Luxembourg

The European Union (the "EU") list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes was updated by the Council of the European Union which added the British Virgin Islands (the "BVI"), Costa Rica, the Marshall Islands and Russia on 14 February 2023 (the "EU Blacklist"). Until the next revision planned for October of 2023, this EU Blacklist now includes the following 16 jurisdictions: American Samoa, Anguilla, the Bahamas, the BVI, Costa Rica, Fiji, Guam, the Marshall Islands, Palau, Panama, Russia, Samoa, Trinity and Tobago, Turks and Caicos, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Vanuatu. The tax implications of being included on the EU Blacklist ...
February 24th, 2023| Legal news

A new procedure for accessing the RBE

In a judgment of 22 November 2022, the Court of Justice of the European Union (the "CJEU") ruled that public access to the beneficial owners register (registre des bénéficiaires effectifs) (the "RBE") did not comply with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. It considered that the fundamental right to privacy under Article 7 and the protection of personal data under Article 8, were violated. The immediate consequence of this decision was the suspension of the access and consultation of the RBE to the public. In December of 2022, a technical and legal solution in line with the ...
February 8th, 2023| Legal news

Professional payment guarantees: how are they used after two and a half years of application of the law?

New positive law rules on guarantees were introduced into the Luxembourg legal system by the Law of 10 July 2020 on professional payment guarantees (the "2020 Law"). The professional payment guarantee (garantie professionnelle de paiement) was created to respond to the needs of practitioners to allow the application of guarantees for financial and commercial transactions based on a flexible and reliable legal framework. Until then, while a surety bond (cautionnement) had a legal basis, a first demand guarantee (garantie à première demande) was created through practice, which, while recognised by jurisprudence, was significantly insecure because of the risk of its being ...
February 8th, 2023| Legal news

A surprising decision was taken by the CNIL on 20 December 2022 concerning the use of personal data in the European Union without applicability of the GDPR

Decision SAN-2022-024 of 20 December 2022 concerning LUSHA SYSTEMS INC. The American Company, LUSHA SYSTEMS INC ("LUSHA"), markets an extension to the Google Chrome browser called "Lusha". The latter allows its users to obtain the professional contact information of people whose profiles they visit on the LinkedIn and Salesforce networks using the LUSHA database. Three mobile applications - developed by Israeli subsidiaries owned by LUSHA - allow the Lusha extension to feed its database giving access to the address books of people downloading those applications on their smartphone. These mobile applications are, at this time, no longer accessible from the ...
February 7th, 2023| Legal news

A few legal tips for reducing the debt-equity ratio in international groups

This subject, which occupies DSM teams during a good part of the year, takes on even more importance as the temperature drops. The purpose of this article is to give you a few points to think about to move forward more calmly towards the end-of-year celebrations. The first point to bear in mind when managing an international group is that the impact will not be the same everywhere. In some jurisdictions, it is possible to effectuate this debt-equity conversion with retroactive effect, but not only is this not the case everywhere, it also entails a risk for the companies concerned, ...
December 14th, 2022| Legal news

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