UK and International Tax news

OECD Update On Global Tax Transparency Initiatives

Thursday 17th November 2022

The OECD has issued an update on the status of global tax transparency initiatives including automatic exchange of information for tax purposes.

The Global Forum has recently reported significant global progress on transparency and exchange of tax information. Jurisdictions are not only automatically exchanging information on 111m accounts but also actively ensuring that financial institutions effectively comply with the requirements.

Peer Review of the Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information 2022 presents the first peer reviews with effectiveness ratings for the 99 countries and jurisdictions which had committed to starting AEOI in 2017 or 2018. It shows that virtually all jurisdictions have put in place the necessary legal frameworks and successfully started exchanges, and are exchanging information without significant timing or technical issues.

The Global Forum has reported that significant progress was achieved, with two-thirds of the jurisdictions actively conducting compliance activities to ensure financial institutions are reporting accurate information and have been given “On Track” ratings. A further 15 jurisdictions were found to have put in place credible compliance frameworks. The need for further implementation actions led these jurisdictions to be rated as “Partially Compliant”. A further 19 jurisdictions were found have fundamental deficiencies in their frameworks. Exchanges are usually taking place each year, but, as these jurisdictions have not yet completed the development of their operational frameworks to verify financial institutions’ compliance, they were rated “Non-Compliant”.

In 2022, countries automatically exchanged information on 111m financial accounts worldwide, covering total assets of EUR 11tn. Over EUR 114bn in additional tax revenues have been identified through voluntary disclosure programmes, offshore tax investigations and related measures since 2009.

The Global Forum have also published 10 new peer review reports on the Exchange of Information on Request [EOIR] for Barbados, BVI, Iceland, Israel, Kuwait, the Maldives, Morocco, Slovenia, South Africa and Turkey. Seven jurisdictions were issued with updated ratings on their practical implementation of the EOIR standard, with six of them (Barbados, Iceland, Morocco, Slovenia, South Africa and Turkey) granted the satisfactory “Largely Compliant” rating, and one (BVI) rated as “Partially Compliant”. The other three reports (Israel, Kuwait and Maldives) only cover the analysis of the legal and regulatory frameworks, with implementation aspects to be analysed in the future.

In 2022, the Global Forum Secretariat provided technical assistance to 95 developing country members, including training to thousands of officials, as part of its global efforts to strengthen tax-collection capacity worldwide.

If you would like further detail on the above, please contact Keith Rushen on 0207 486 2378.

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