[World Tax News] Malaysia Introduces E-BOS for Submitting Beneficial Ownership Information and More

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Editorial Team – [2024] 161 taxmann.com 183 (Article)

World Tax News provides a weekly snippet of tax news from around the globe. Here is a glimpse of the tax happening in the world this week.

1. Malaysia introduces e-BOS for submitting beneficial ownership information

On April 1, 2024, the Companies Commission of Malaysia made public the initiation of the Electronic Beneficial Ownership System (e-BOS). The launch of e-BOS is in line with the company’s obligation to identify, acquire, record, update and submit beneficial ownership information with the Registrar as outlined in the ‘Guideline for the Reporting Framework for Beneficial Ownership of Companies’ effective April 1, 2024.

With the launch of e-BOS, the transition period introduced on March 1, 2020, through the ‘Guideline for the Reporting Framework for Beneficial Ownership of Legal Persons’ has been abolished in line with the enforcement of the Companies (Amendment) Act 2024 on April 1, 2024.

Guidelines for the Reporting Framework for Beneficial Ownership of Companies

The Guidelines were issued to assist companies to understand and fully comply with the beneficial ownership reporting requirements pursuant to the amendments made to the Companies Act 2016.

Under the new beneficial ownership reporting framework, several improvements are introduced, amongst others:

(a) The new definition of ‘beneficial owner’ as a natural person who ultimately owns or controls a company through interest in shares and effective interest and includes an individual who exercises ultimate effective control over the company;

(b) The obligation of companies to have in place a separate register of beneficial owners that must be kept at the registered office and

(c) The obligation of beneficial owners to notify companies of their status as beneficial owners of the companies including any changes to the beneficial ownership information recorded in the register of beneficial owners kept by the companies at the registered office.

Source: Press Release launching e-BOS

Guidelines For The Reporting Framework For Beneficial Ownership Of Companies

2. New Zealand ensures the applicability of Pillar 2 GloBE Rules from January 2025

The New Zealand government has declared the passing of the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill, which was granted royal assent on March 28, 2024. The significant aspects of this legislation involve adopting the OECD’s Pillar 2 Global Anti-Base Erosion (GloBE) rules establishing a minimum tax rate of 15%. These rules will apply to multinational enterprises with consolidated revenue exceeding EUR 750 million in any two of the preceding four years. Such entities will be required to remit a multinational top-up tax to Inland Revenue, which will be determined by:

(a) An income inclusion rule is applied when a New Zealand-based multinational enterprise has under-taxed income in another country;

(b) A domestic income inclusion rule is applied when a New Zealand-based multinational enterprise has under-taxed income in New Zealand;

(c) An under-taxed profits rule is a backup to ensure that multinational enterprises based in countries that are not implementing the GloBE rules still contribute via top-up tax.

The income inclusion rule and under-taxed profits rule will take effect from January 1, 2025, while the domestic income inclusion rule will become effective from January 1, 2026.

Source: Release- Passage of major tax bill welcomed

Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023-24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill

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