Ensuring taxpayers pay the tax that is due is crucial to maintaining public finances and reinforcing the public’s trust in the tax system. As the financial sector has become increasingly globalised, governments have deepened their level of cooperation to ensure that taxpayers with offshore financial activities continue to meet their domestic tax obligations.
In this regard there has been a dramatic step change over recent years. Whereas tax authorities previously relied largely on individual requests for specific pieces of information relevant to particular tax investigations, the world has strengthened its cooperation by exchanging information automatically each year in relation to a wide range of financial assets held offshore. This is based on the Standard for Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information in Tax Matters (AEOI Standard), developed by the OECD, working with G20 countries.
The scale of the shift is truly massive, with over 110 jurisdictions now exchanging information on over 111 million financial accounts, with a total value of EUR 11 trillion. Furthermore, another 10 jurisdictions are expected to commence exchanges in the coming years. The information exchanged includes details of Financial Accounts held by foreign tax residents including, in certain cases, where such Financial Accounts are held through Entities that are controlled by foreign tax residents (defined as Controlling Persons).
This has created a permanent shift in the calculous for tax evaders that seek to hide their finances offshore, including through offshore entities, with their chances of being caught now being greater than ever. The impact has already been huge, with over EUR 114 billion in tax, interest and penalties having been raised through voluntary disclosure programmes and other offshore tax compliance initiatives since the commitments were made to implement the AEOI Standard. Furthermore, academic studies have shown that financial investments held in international financial centres have decreased by 22% over the same time period, which has been linked to the implementation of the AEOI Standard.
Delivering the move to the AEOI Standard has required significant investment by jurisdictions and Financial Institutions. Governments across the world have introduced legislation to require Financial Institutions to conduct the detailed due diligence and reporting requirements, have put in place international exchange agreements and have implemented operational and technical solutions to collect and exchange the information, as well as to keep it confidential and secure. Having made these investments and successfully delivered widespread information exchange, the focus has moved to ensuring that the AEOI Standard is operating effectively in practice, in order to maximise the potential benefits.
This is why, once the AEOI Standard had been developed, the G20 called on the Global Forum on Transparency and the Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes (the Global Forum) to monitor and review its global implementation to ensure its effectiveness. Accordingly, throughout the implementation process, the Global Forum has monitored whether the key milestones are being met, before moving to carrying out peer reviews to assess the quality of its implementation. This was to ensure any issues could be addressed early in the implementation process, to maximise the effectiveness of the AEOI Standard based on a level playing field. In this regard, the domestic and international legal frameworks for the first 106 jurisdictions that committed to exchange information automatically have been reviewed, with the results published since 2019. The results show a very high level of completeness of the legal frameworks, with over 90% of jurisdictions being assessed as having legal frameworks for AEOI that are in place or in place but need improvement.
With the completion of the assessments of the AEOI legal frameworks, the focus of the Global Forum turned to ensuring that the AEOI Standard operates effectively in practice. This includes ensuring that Financial Institutions are properly implementing the due diligence and reporting rules, as well as ensuring the correct functioning of the exchanges in practice. In this regard the Global Forum has conducted initial peer reviews to establish the jurisdictions that are on track in their implementation and those with more work to do. The results of these initial effectiveness reviews are being published for the first time in this report. They show that the large majority of jurisdictions are on track, including by implementing administrative compliance frameworks and carrying out compliance interventions to ensure compliance by Financial Institutions and by ensuring the smooth operation of the exchanges. Nevertheless, the results also show that many jurisdictions are still in the early stages of developing and implementing their frameworks and that this should be a key area of focus in the coming years, to maximise the effectiveness of the AEOI Standard as a tool to tackle offshore tax evasion.
In order to promote this focus, the Global Forum is putting in place a further peer review framework, building on the initial reviews to date, to obtain a deeper level of comfort that jurisdictions are ensuring that the AEOI Standard is effective in practice. This will involve a more detailed assessment of the effectiveness of each jurisdiction’s administrative compliance framework to ensure that Reporting Financial Institutions are applying due diligence procedures in accordance with the AEOI Standard and the effectiveness of each jurisdiction’s exchange of information in practice, including the proper preparation, validation and transmission of the information.
Chapter 1 provides the latest results of the monitoring process to track the timeliness of the delivery of the commitments to implement the AEOI Standard.
Chapter 2 sets out details of the peer reviews that have been conducted, including the reviews of the AEOI legal frameworks and the initial reviews of the effectiveness of the implementation of the AEOI Standard in practice, as well as a summary of the results.
Chapter 3 presents the jurisdiction-specific reports, including the analysis, findings and recommendations made, as well as the determinations in relation to the AEOI legal frameworks and the ratings in relation to effectiveness in practice.
Annex A provides details of how the various reviews have been staged (the “Staged Approach”).
Annex B provides information on all the exchange agreements that are in place with respect to the AEOI Standard, including those activated through multilateral frameworks, as well as bilateral agreements.
Annex C contains the AEOI Terms of Reference, which provides the basis for the AEOI reviews.
The information in this report is up to date as of 2 November 2022. Further information and updates are available on the AEOI Portal (www.oecd.org/tax/automatic-exchange) and the relevant communication channels that each jurisdiction has in place domestically.
