Financial Transparency Coalition

The following answer to a written question has been published by the States of Jersey today:

WRITTEN QUESTION TO THE CHIEF MINISTER BY THE DEPUTY OF ST. MARY ANSWER TO BE TABLED ON TUESDAY 18th JANUARY 2011 Question Can the Chief Minister inform members how many Tax Information Exchange Agreements were in force at the beginning of 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010? Can he further tell members, for each of those years, how many requests for information have been received, from how many countries they were received, and in how many cases was the information requested found and...

NEW DELHI: India and Norway are all set to expand the scope of their double taxation avoidance agreement (DTAA) to facilitate greater information exchange on potential cases of tax evasion. After changes to the Indo-Swiss tax treaty this would be the second such treaty that would be reworked to ensure smooth flow of information on tax-related issues.

On Monday, amid much fanfare, Switzerland signed a revised double tax treaty with India, concerning exchange of information between the two jurisdictions (for general background on what tax treaties and TIEAs are, see here.) Recently, we blogged Indian concerns about the OECD's standard of information exchange, and we have written extensively on the OECD standards themselves, calling them woefully inadequate and noting that they are emphtically not, as the OECD likes to assert, the "internationally accepted standard." It may be a sign of the pressures that developing countries are under that...

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...