Free DAC6 preliminary assessment tool

Sometimes it feels like hard work to keep pushing forward.

I have to admit that when I first heard about DAC6, my first reaction was ‘what now?’ And then when I started reading into it, my second reaction was ‘this is a complete nightmare.’ (In case you haven’t come across this little beauty yet, DAC6 is an EU regime which requires the reporting of cross-border arrangements for which the first step was taken after 25 June 2018, and which have certain ‘hallmarks’. By the way, I am generally very pro-European Union, and I’m sure this legislation was introduced with the best of motives. But nevertheless, it imposes a considerable burden on businesses and advisers, not to mention governments.)

Of course, it was very welcome news on Friday that the European Commission has decided to defer certain deadlines for filing and exchanging information under DAC6 by three months. But three months will pass very quickly, and it doesn’t look like the whole thing will go away.

Since we at LCN Legal need to get to grips with the rules in relation to the arrangements on which we have advised, so we need to do the work anyway, it seemed like a good idea to share what we’ve got so far – which is a ‘beta’ testing version of an online self-assessment tool to make a preliminary conclusion as to reportability of a given arrangement.

The tool consists of an online questionnaire which collects the relevant information regarding the ‘main benefit’ test and the applicable ‘hallmarks’, and applies the logic regarding the inter-relationship of the hallmarks and the main benefit test as prescribed by the DAC. The output is a Word document which contains a log of the responses made, as well as an executive summary of preliminary conclusions on reportability in the form of a ‘traffic light’ report.

We’re making it available for free here.