Financial Transparency Coalition

TJN has repeatedly reported about Switzerland’s devious strategy of breaking the European Union’s thrust for a functioning system of automatic information exchange. The Swiss Finance Ministry, in conjunction with its banks, deployed a strategy to fence off the dawning end of financial secrecy, called the “final withholding tax”. It is designed to preserve banking secrecy while buying off noise-making foreign governments through the transfer of a final tax on foreign citizens’ financial account’s income (details here). The German-language Swiss newspaper Tagesanzeiger reported on spokespersons of the German and Swiss Finance Ministries signalling their willingness to soon...

WASHINGTON, DC – The U.S. Treasury Department will hold a hearing tomorrow on a proposed rule requiring banks to report information to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on bank accounts held by non-U.S. residents. Currently, U.S. banks are not required to give the U.S. government information about these types of accounts.

Indian finance minister Pranab Mukherjee called for international pressure to force non-cooperative jurisdictions to share information about the money they hide at an Asian Development Bank Governors’ seminar last week. This comes in the wake of a series of moves by India to crack down on the huge black money flows out of the country. Earlier in the year Mukherjee made similar comments in the build up to a meeting of G20 finance ministers, arguing for an “effective multilateral platform for automatic, spontaneous and requested exchange of information”. India also demonstrated its commitment to financial transparency by joining...

The FT reports:

Britons with billions of pounds hidden in Switzerland will pay tax at 50 per cent under a groundbreaking deal that will legitimise their undeclared assets, according to a source familiar with negotiations between the Swiss and British governments. The agreement, which is expected to be announced this month, marks a shift in emphasis in the international crackdown on tax havens. Over the past two years, the focus has been on lifting bank secrecy and exposing evaders. Under the deal, £3bn is expected to be raised over the course of this parliament and investors will also pay a one-off...