Nordea Bank Interprets Spanish Tax Legislation Opportunistically
Page 27 of the brochure Guide to Wealth and Tax Planning in Spain gives us some clues of extreme deceit. Not only it openly vindicates the evasion of Spanish taxes by elaborating on specific tax concepts, but this essay also contains suspicious omissions that, if known, would have made a potential subscriber of the product pull out. The most crucial omission is contained a Spanish tax provision quoted on page 27, top right, which reads:
“ non-residents tax payers are only liable on the basis of assets located in Spain (or rights acquired by virtue of inheritance or donation), or where the life insurance policy has been established through a Spanish insurance company.”
This quote is inspired on article 7 of the Spanish Inheritance and Gift Tax Act, which says the above but also, the following: “or where the life insurance has been established by foreign insurance entities operating in Spain”.
Which clearly leads us to conclude that Nordea consciously omitted a crucial bit of information that, if inserted, would have made the whole proposal of Equity Release fall by the wayside and thus, the brochure would have not existed. If all of those who signed with Nordea had been given the benefit of objective and transparent tax information, rather than deliberately manipulated, they would have not been saddled with these obnoxious products. Unfortunately, they were lied to.
Article 282 of the Spanish Penal Code stipulates: “manufacturers or traders that, when advertising products and services, make false or untrue statements about the same, capable of causing serious damage to customers, will serve a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 12 months imprisonment.”
Documents
- Nordea-Brochure (PDF ~800 kb)
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