Mass signing of automatic exchange agreement

Thursday, 30 October 2014
The new OECD/G20 standard on automatic exchange of tax information was endorsed by more than 50 jurisdictions at this week's annual meeting of the Global Forum on Tax Transparency.

The signatory jurisdictions include most of the major international financial centres.

Information exchange will begin in September 2017 for early adopters with others to follow in 2018. This second-phase list includes Switzerland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Macao, Monaco, Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, as well as Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

The agreement also includes a requirement that beneficial ownership of all legal entities will be made available to tax authorities and exchanged with treaty partners. It contains clauses to protect taxpayer confidentiality and ensure that the information is only used for the purposes for which it was supplied.

Five jurisdictions have not yet committed to an implementation date: Panama; Bahrain; Cook Islands; Nauru; and Vanuatu.

  • The USA is an exceptional case in that it does not appear in any of the lists since it is unilaterally imposing automatic information exchange from 2015 under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.

Sources

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