Financial Transparency Coalition

For a while now, we’ve been writing about the ongoing effort by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to create new standards for the exchange of tax and financial information between countries. The new system would help clamp down on corrupt individuals that hide their money in countries with strict secrecy laws and low tax rates.

While there are many questions still remaining about implementation, one thing is clear: developing countries must be included. Some of the largest cases of illicit financial flows involve money being siphoned out of developing countries by corrupt individuals, criminals, and corporate tax evaders. Automatic exchange presents an opportunity to enhance transparency, while helping to deter and detect illicit flows.

In late May, however, Pascal Saint-Amans, Director of the OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, said that developing countries would likely be left out of the information exchange system, because they “are not ready, and most of them don’t want it.”

But a new report out this week from FTC member Tax Justice Network (TJN) seems to contradict that very claim. TJN surveyed a number of developing countries to find out what they genuinely thought about the automatic exchange system.

Read the report here.