On Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes

If a person or entity resident in one jurisdiction owns income-generating assets in another jurisdiction, the resident's tax authorities generally need to know about that asset or income, to assess their tax liabities. For this reason, jurisdictions exchange information with each other for tax (and other) purposes under a range of international schemes, agreements and protocols. The OECD likes to claim that its weak standards for information exchange "on request" constitute the "internationally agreed standard" for information exchange. 

However, a consensus is beginning to emerge, strongly supported by the Tax Justice Network (TJN), that the world needs to progress quickly away from the flawed OECD standards and towards much stronger and better forms of information exchange, notably "automatic" information exchange between jurisdiction, on a multilateral basis.

This page seeks to provide information and links about the different forms of information exchange, and to provide news about what is happening in this area. We have published a briefing paper on the subject (which can also be accessed on our briefing papers section, and in our growing A-Z archive. In January 2010, TJN also produced a detailed memorandum to the United Nations Tax Committee explaining how, contrary to the OECD's view, automatic information exchange is, in fact, the emerging global standard.  

We have also produced a number of news items, looking at political, practical and other aspects of information exchange.