Financial Transparency Coalition

WASHINGTON, DC – While noting significant progress today in the global effort to curb tax evasion, Global Financial Integrity (GFI) expressed concerns that the OECD/G20 movement toward automatic exchange of financial information was excluding the world’s poorest countries from reaping any benefits while failing to deal with the issue of illicit financial flows in comprehensive manor. 89 countries committed Wednesday to implement automatic exchange of financial information between jurisdictions by the end of 2017 or 2018 at the annual meeting of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes in Berlin.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is moving towards implementing a new tool for catching tax evaders: automatic exchange of financial information (AEOI). While the name might sound a bit confusing, the idea is pretty simple. Governments in the system will share financial information with each other at designated intervals, enabling authorities to find individuals and corporations that are stashing assets in foreign countries to evade taxes. While it’s a welcome initiative, we have serious concerns about the OECD's efforts thus far to include developing countries. Developing countries are some of the hardest hit by tax evasion and...

This week the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released the full version of its new standard for automatic tax information exchange. Under the standard, governments would collect data from financial institutions on investment income, financial assets, and account balances paid to non-resident accountholders. On an annual basis, participating governments would exchange that information automatically with other jurisdictions. In a statement, OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria said the launch “moves us closer to a world in which tax cheats have nowhere left to hide.” This impetus for this new standard came from a mandate by G20 nations and the OECD...

While Brazil is the only member of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, Indian, China, South Africa) bloc still alive in this year's World Cup, members from all five nations will reconvene on the Brazilian town of Fortaleza, just days after the tournament's conclusion. The 2013 BRICS Summit, held in South Africa, reaffirmed the group's commitment to economic development and stability. Ahead of this year's summit, which will be held July 15-17, the FTC offered a submission to the group on how and why financial transparency issues are vital to BRICS' agenda. You can read the full submission here.