One of the EOI consultations relates to the OECD / Council of Europe Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters, which Switzerland signed in 2013 and which allows for EOI upon request, spontaneously and automatically. The other covers the country’s participation in the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement (MCAA), which enables the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) on automatic EOI to operate globally. Switzerland signed the agreement in Berlin in November 2014.
“The Federal Council's decision to sign the administrative assistance convention and implement the global AEOI [automatic exchange of information] standard is in line with its strategy for a competitive Swiss financial centre, which includes the international standards in the area of tax and particularly those concerning transparency and the exchange of information,” the Swiss Federal Department of Finance (FDF) said in a statement.
Switzerland proposes making some adjustments to how the multilateral administrative assistance convention applies to it. It said the service of foreign authorities’ documents in Switzerland should be by post only and vice versa. It added that its assistance relating to criminal tax offences should only apply from the time it signed the convention on October 15 2013. The FDF added that Switzerland will generally inform affected taxpayers about a forthcoming exchange of information and that it would not allow foreign countries to conduct tax audits in Switzerland.
The MCAA is based on article 6 of the administrative assistance convention and allows for AEOI globally. The FDF said a new Swiss law - the Federal Act on the International Automatic Exchange of Information in Tax Matters - is required because the MCAA and CRS do not have enough detail and cannot be litigated.
The FDF statement set out a timetable for the implementation of AEOI in Switzerland: the consultations have a closing date of April 21 2015 and the draft legislation will be available for parliament to discuss in autumn 2015. It could come into force from the beginning of 2017, if a referendum is required, and the first EOI could take place the following year.
