Bruno Simoes

Profile

Thesis title

Contribution towards the tax harmonisation of investment-linked life assurance policies in the European Union (working title).

Supervisors

Dr Tom O’Shea and Dr Julian Hickey

Summary of Research

Governments worldwide encourage citizens saving for their retirement in order to avoid future public expenses in health care and also to allow collecting more taxable income as people get older. Thus, like pension savings, life assurance has also been used as a savings vehicle for many years. According to Annex II of the Solvency II Directive (2009/138/EC), which repealed the Life Assurance Directive (LAD) (2002/83/EC), there are nine classes of assurance, in particular Class III which includes ‘life assurance linked to investment funds’. This class of assurance is the most complex from a EU Tax Law perspective, and therefore, will be given particular attention in this thesis. As a first step of this research, the author will compare the tax regime applicable to both domestic and foreign EU life assurance policies (sold on a FOS basis) in certain EU Member States (MS) in order to then propose measures to potentially harmonise (if possible) the tax regime applicable to Life Assurance Investment-Linked (Class III) Policies within the EU.

Biography

Bruno is a Portuguese qualified lawyer with background in Tax Law and he has worked for the Generali Group for the last six years as a legal and tax life assurance specialist.

Research