Bern can wait on double taxation with Germany

Finance Minister Hans-Rudolf Merz says there is no rush to negotiate a double taxation agreement with Germany in the wake of Switzerland relaxing its banking secrecy.

In an interview with the NZZ am Sonntag newspaper, Merz said: “I am in no hurry.”

Merz said he would meet his German counterpart Peer Steinbrück for a dinner on the sidelines of a high-level meeting on tax havens in Berlin on June 23.

“But there is no question that we will negotiate a double taxation agreement with Germany: Businesses do not want that we engage in cockfighting, they want that the cooperation of the two countries works,” Merz said.

Germany has been one of the main supporters of a global campaign against tax cheats and managed to gather support for the naming of Switzerland and other opaque offshore financial centres at the G20 meeting in London in April.

Switzerland has said it will adopt international standards for tax transparency and cooperation in 12 new treaties it has been called on to sign by the end of the year.

Merz repeated Switzerland was working urgently to secure the agreements.

In the case of the negotiations with the United States, Merz remained cautious about whether the Swiss would get a US lawsuit against the UBS banking group dropped in return for a treaty.

“I don’t know if the deal succeeds,” he said. But he added that US finance minster Tim Geithner had understood the US had also to make concessions.

The US Internal Revenue Service is seeking to force UBS to reveal the identities of 52,000 Americans suspected of using accounts at the bank to hide about $14.8 billion (SFr16 billion) of assets and evade US taxes.

swissinfo.ch with agencies