Monaco has become the 84th jurisdiction to commit to strengthen international tax cooperation through its participation in the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters.
Welcoming the signing by José Badia, Monaco’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD’s) Secretary-General, Angel Gurría, said: “Monaco has taken many positive steps towards improving transparency in recent years. Today’s signing is an important new signal that Monaco is seriously committed to the international fight against offshore tax avoidance and evasion.”
Gurría noted that the continuing increase in signatories to the Convention reflects the growing levels of support for the exchange of information on request, and that it signals growing recognition that automatic exchange of information is becoming the new international standard.
The Multilateral Convention provides for all forms of mutual assistance: exchange on request; spontaneous exchange; tax examinations abroad; simultaneous tax examinations; and assistance in tax collection; while also protecting taxpayers’ rights. It provides the option to undertake automatic exchange of tax information.
The Convention is to be a key agenda item during the annual meeting of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes on October 28-29, 2014, in Berlin, Germany. Representatives from more than 40 countries and jurisdictions are expected to sign a Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement on Financial Account Information, which will signal their commitment to launching automatic exchange in the near future, building on the United States’s Financial Account Tax Compliance Act.
Source: Tax News, Ulrika Lomas.
