BERN: Switzerland and the European Union have signed a deal to automatically exchange tax data on citizens from 2018, for tracking down the hidden wealth of cross border tax cheats.
As a world’s biggest offshore wealth management center, Switzerland is taking steps to eradicate tax cheats. This is a major step towards fighting tax evasion, called European Commission because EU citizens could no longer stash wealth in Swiss accounts to hide it from the tax authorities.
According to European Commissioner Pierre Moscovici “Today we are taking a decisive step towards total tax transparency between Switzerland and the EU. I am confident that our other neighbors will soon follow suit. This transparency is vital to ensure that each country can collect the tax revenues it is due”.
The agreement must be operated which fully reflects new global standards on exchanging information about income from such things as dividends, interest payments and license fees, the Swiss Finance Ministry said.
The plan is to start collecting data in 2017, and then exchange it with EU member countries from the next year, it added.
