Financial Transparency Coalition

As far as international tax cooperation goes, the OECD is the organization that holds the cards. Or at least it does when it comes to the standards by which countries exchange information for tax purposes. According to OECD guidelines, countries which have negotiated bilateral Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIEAs) exchange of information for tax purposes on request when it is "foreseeably relevant." The OECD also maintains a gray list of so-called “tax havens;” jurisdictions with a lack of transparency that have signed fewer than twelve TIEAs. The jurisdictions which reach that threshold are removed from...

A while ago we pointed to a study by Misereor that had concluded, on the subject of double tax treaties (DTTs) and tax information exchange agreements (TIEAs), that Only 6 percent of DTTs show a signature of a Low Income Country (with an even smaller participation of 3 percent for Least Developed Countries). The situation with TIEAs is even worse: There is no single LIC (leaving aside LDC) as signing party of any TIEA documented on the OECD website. . . . While G20 and OECD are promoting DTTs and TIEAs as centrepieces of a global standard on transparency...

Denmark, Italy and United Kingdom Advance Toward Active Enforcement; 20 of 36 Signatories Doing Little to Nothing to Enforce Ban on Foreign Bribery A number of countries were applauded for their efforts to enforce a ban on foreign bribery in a report released yesterday by Transparency International (TI). Yet many countries are still not doing enough, if anything at all. The report looks at how well the 32 OECD member countries and non-members are complying with the OECD Anti-Bribery...

Conclusions of the OECD Meeting of the Council at Ministerial Level, 27-28 May 2010