BERN: The Swiss Federal Council has submitted to Parliament dispatches on the implementation of the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters and the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement on the Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information (MCAA).
Developed by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Council for Europe, the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters establishes a comprehensive multilateral framework for the exchange of information and assistance in tax collection. Switzerland signed the Convention in October 2013. The dispatch makes provision for three forms of information exchange: upon request, spontaneous, and automatic.
The second proposal submitted to Parliament concerns the MCAA, which was signed by Switzerland in November 2014. The new Federal Act on the International Automatic Exchange of Information in Tax Matters (AEOI Act) contains provisions on the organizational, procedural, judicial, and criminal requirements associated with the MCAA.
A consultation on the two proposals ran from January 14 to April 21, 2015. Parliament will begin its deliberations this autumn. The legal basis for the changes is due to enter into force at the start of 2017, with the first information exchanges expected to take place in 2018. It would still be possible to meet these deadlines if a referendum on the proposals were held, the Federal Council said.