Taxation agreement revised with Britain
Switzerland and Britain have concluded negotiations on extending administrative assistance in tax matters and have initialled a revised duel taxation agreement (DTA).
On March 13 the government decided to relax Swiss banking secrecy laws to fall into line with regulations set by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
This would permit the exchange of customer information with other countries in individual cases where a specific and justified request has been made, according to the government.
The revised DTA will also contain a provision providing for arbitration within the article on the mutual agreement procedures. The provision follows the OECD model.
Britain is the tenth country with which Switzerland has initialled a DTA containing the extended administrative assistance clause after Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway, France, Mexico, the United States, Japan, the Netherlands and Poland.
Initialling is defined as the approval of a contractual text by appending initials. Negotiators can in this way provisionally draw up the negotiated contractual text of DTAs (and other agreements based on international law).
Switzerland wants to initial 12 DTAs by the end of the year in order to be taken off an OECD “grey list” of states accused of a lack of financial transparency.
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