OECD Charts States’ Participation In Int’l Tax Initiatives
For the first time, the OECD has published a map that sets out countries’ participation and compliance with international tax initiatives, looking specifically at the exchange of information in tax matters, with the old international standard – the exchange of information on request – and the new, on the automatic exchange of tax information, and its new base erosion and profit shifting minimum standards.
On the exchange of information on request, the map provides information on what countries have passed a stage 1 review, which looks at the existence and quality of countries’ tax information exchange frameworks, and phase 2 checks, which looks at how countries’ frameworks for the exchange of tax information on request operate in practice.
The map also includes information on countries’ compliance with the OECD’s new tax information exchange standard, the Common Reporting Standard (CRS), which provides for the automatic exchange of information in tax matters, with the first exchanges taking place from next year. The map sets out in which year countries intend to begin exchanging information in tax matters automatically on an annual basis, or, in the absence of such, whether the country has committed to adopt CRS in the future. It also looks at whether countries have signed the multilateral convention on administrative assistance, which provides for all forms of cooperation between countries in tax matters.
Finally, the map sets out to what degree countries have adopted legislative changes to adopt the minimum standards of the BEPS project. In implementing the minimum standards, countries agree to remove harmful tax provisions in their domestic tax regimes, amend their tax treaty rules to prevent treaty abuse, implement country-by-country reporting rules and exchange these reports with other countries, and work together to improve cross-border tax dispute resolution mechanisms. As well as agreeing to implement the minimum standards, members of the “Inclusive Framework” agree to work together on an equal footing to develop further BEPS measures, commit to participate in peer reviews on BEPS measures’ consistent implementation, and pay an annual fee to the OECD.
