Hiding Money in a Swiss Bank to Be Thing of the Past from 2018

The European Commission and Switzerland have been in talks recently and have finally concluded an agreement that deals with total tax transparency. It is part of the EU’s plan to fight against tax fraud and evasion, which results in the loss of millions of euro each year.

The new tax transparency agreement will finally put an end to EU citizens being able to stash and hide their money away in a Swiss bank account without anyone knowing about it.

The deal has been on the cards for a long time, as talks on this subject have been ongoing for several years, and it now seems that a suitable conclusion has been reached.

Under the new agreement, the Swiss authorities will be obliged to share all the information about bank accounts held in their country that have been opened by EU residents.

This means that Switzerland will have to provide any member state that asks with the full details of their accounts held by residents from that country.

This is set to take place from 2018.

From this point, member states will be sent the names, addresses, tax identification numbers and date of births of each of their residents that has a bank account in Switzerland. This will be in addition to other financial details and the balance of the account, and it will be done on a yearly basis.

Commissioner for economic and financial affairs, taxation and customs, Pierre Moscovici, said: “Today we are taking a decisive step towards total tax transparency between Switzerland and the EU. This transparency is vital so that each country receives the tax revenue that it is owed.”

The above is all in line with the new OECD/G20 global standard for the automatic exchange of this type of information.

It is hoped that the EU Council and the Swiss Government sign this agreement before the end of this summer.

This announcement follows the decision to introduce new legislation across the EU28 to force tax authorities to share details of tax rulings with multinational companies every three months.

Source: www.idealista.com, www.accountancylive.com