- The international agreement for the automatic exchange of information (Common Reporting Standard) will be launched in January. In this way, countries will be able to know the financial assets of the population abroad. The United States, however, has not adhered to the agreement, which has already been dubbed “the new Switzerland” by several experts.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has supported the agreement on the automatic exchange of information with a view to ending the opacity of tax havens. But the United States has not joined the international process, even though it suggested the initial regulation of the agreement.
Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States launched a campaign against tax havens and approved the FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) system. This allows you to exchange tax information with other haciendas. On the other hand, although it requires data from all Americans (whether they are tax residents or not), it only offers accounts of those who are natural persons. The rest of the countries that have signed the FATCA system, however, are obliged to provide all data on Americans, including the so-called social and trust structure.
In the international agreement on automatic exchange of information, both countries are obliged to provide data. All the countries of the European Union, with the exception of Austria, have expressed their support, although some of them are not ready to implement the system in 2017 and have postponed it. A total of 104 jurisdictions have approved the agreement. Some of them are territories that do not have the name of State.
In this system, banks are the subjects obliged to provide the data and not the taxpayers. Governments will start collecting data for 2016 in May 2017. They will then be sent to their respective countries. In this way, France, for example, will receive data on the money a Frenchman has in a German bank. The taxpayer does not have to do anything (except not to lie), since the data will be exposed automatically.
As expected, there will be no tax shelters in the world in 2018, except for Delaware, Nevada, South Dakota and Miami. Experts believe that opaque social structures will migrate to the United States, among the countries that have not signed the agreement, because they are the only one that can offer the necessary legal security, and because impunity is much greater there, for those who have money hidden in it.