The agreement incorporates the Common Reporting Standard, unveiled by the OECD in 2014 as the global standard for the automatic exchange of information, and replaces the savings tax agreement between the EU and Switzerland, which has been in place since 2005. This imposed a withholding tax on so-called Swiss paying agents if they chose not to report interest payments to EU residents.
Switzerland and the 28 member states of the EU will collect account data about each others' taxpayers from 2017 and start to exchange it the following year.
It is the second agreement on automatic exchange that Switzerland has signed this month. On March 3, it finalised one with Australia. A Swiss government statement said it would pursue such agreements with the US and other countries.
