Date for compliance with special US treaty covering UBS draws near
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – The Swiss Federal Council has approved four double taxation treaties, with Poland, The Netherlands, Japan and Turkey, all of which now conform to OECD requirements. The governing council of seven has forwarded these to the Swiss Parliament, which can consider an optional vote to approve the treaties. Switzerland earlier this year gave final approval to 10 0ther double taxation agreements.
The government also approved two completely new agreements, with Georgia and Tajikistan, but noting that “because a speedy entry into force of the DTAs was sought, Switzerland, Georgia and the Republic of Tajikistan agreed to waive the extended administrative assistance clause in accordance with the OECD standard for the time being.”
The OECD standard enables each government to ask for help in pursuing tax fraud suspects, as long as the taxpayer’s actions are considered fraud. The requesting government must already have clear evidence of likely fraud.
US-Swiss treaty deadline 26 August: Bern says it is ready
A finance ministry spokesperson confirmed to AFP information published earlier this week by Le Temps newspaper that Switzerland in July sent data on 2,500 bank accounts to the US, but it has not confirmed media reports that the rest of the 4,200 accounts in question will be delivered by Thursday 26 August, the deadline.
The US had requested help with 4,450 accounts, but some 250 were dismissed early on as not involving suspected fraud.
Meanwhile, German authorities told Bloomberg that they are studying new information on possible tax fraud supplied by an informant.
Swiss-German tensions have been strained by the purchase of stolen Swiss bank data by a German state.
Background, Switzerland and revised double taxation bilateral agreements, 15 February 2010, GenevaLunch
Links to other sites: AFP, Bloomberg, Federal Justice Office press release with timeline of US-Swiss agreement on UBS
This work by genevalunch.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.
News story, GenevaLunch, 25 August 2010.
Tags: banking, bilateral agreements, double taxation, fraud, Georgia, Japan, Poland, Switzerland, The Netherlands, treaties, Turkey, U.S.
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