Brussels, 18/06/2013 (Agence Europe) - At the end of their two-day summit in Lough Erne (Northern Ireland), hosted by the British Presidency of the G8, the eight countries' leaders published a statement on Tuesday 18 June in which they say they want to promote fair taxation around the world, boost transparency and clamp down on tax evasion and tax fraud.
They recommend: - the automatic exchange of information (AEI) to tackle tax evasion; - changing the rules that currently allow companies to transfer profits from one country to another to reduce the amount of tax they pay and introducing rules to force multinationals to publish details of how much tax they pay in each country, which will help tax authorities stop them shifting money around to wriggle out of tax; - rules to find out who ultimately owns a company and providing this information to the tax and legal authorities to prevent phantom companies being set up to hide business dealings; - international aid and assistance for developing countries to help them get information they need about taxes due to them and means of collecting them; - forcing mining and forestry companies to publish details of bribes and other payments to governments and for governments to provide details of fees received in order to prevent corruption and secret payments; -publication by governments of information about laws, budgets, spending, statistics, elections and contracts, in order to boost transparency and reliability in the eyes of public opinion.
One of the main results of the summit was the presentation by the OECD, upon request from the G8, of a report laying down a roadmap for implementation globally of an AEI system among tax authorities based on standard criteria. This is an important step in the process of making AEI the international standard and will get round the persistent refusal of some jurisdictions to provide details of sums passing through bank accounts that may be avoiding tax. It also meets the demand of countries like Switzerland that have used the excuse of lack of international standards for AEI to refuse to agree to it in tax deals with other countries, including the EU. The process recommended by the OECD is in four stages: i) introducing broad legislation to make it easier to extend a country's network of partner tax authorities, (ii) selecting a legal basis for the exchange of information, (iii) adjusting the domain of information to be provided and requirements for meeting criteria and coordinating the process, (iv) drawing up common or compatible computer system standards for AEI. The OECD report suggests deadlines for each stage and says that much of the work is already under way at the OECD. “We will make a real difference by doing the following”, explain the G8 leaders at the start of the list of recommendations. It remains to be seen now how they will turn their words into action. (FG/transl.fl)