The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Task Force on Tax Crimes and Other Crimes launched its new report, Ending the Shell Game: Cracking down on the Professionals who enable Tax and White Collar Crimes, during the 2021 OECD Global Anti-Corruption & Integrity Forum this week. The report sets out a range of strategies… Read More OECD steps up the fight against enablers of tax and financial crimes
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) invited some of the UK’s financial industry experts, including STEP, to join an overview of the OECD’s current review of the Common Reporting Standard (CRS). The OECD will launch a consultation later this year, but has requested early input from industry experts on the improvements and changes that they would… Read More The OECD reviews the Common Reporting Standard
The disclosure of cross-border tax planning arrangements under Council Directive (EU) 2018/822 (DAC6) came into force on 1 July 2020 and requires reporting of any persons involved in cross-border arrangements, including loan agreements, payments from a resident of one country to a resident of another, or putting funds in an offshore trust, if one of the… Read More The UK replaces DAC6 with the OECD’s model Mandatory Disclosure Rules (MDR) post-Brexit
Update: STEP News 1 Nov: UK revises anti-organised crime strategy to target professional ‘facilitators’ Original blog: Ben Wallace MP, UK Minister of State for Security at the Home Office, has called for more to be done to make lawyers and accountants who facilitate money laundering recognise their responsibilities. As part of a House of Commons… Read More The new gatekeepers of the financial system
STEP attended the most recent CRS Business Advisory Group hosted by HMRC and discussed the following issues: FAQs HMRC advised that new documents on the OECD portal have been published along with some additional FAQs. Anti-avoidance Members were interested to know when the OECD will publish its loophole paper which will review loophole reporting strategies.… Read More CRS reporting update, June 2017
STEP yesterday (14 April) received a letter from Mr Kosie Louw, Chair of the OECD Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes, which was sent to all members of the Global Forum. The letter contains the following statement: ‘I want to state that the public release of taxpayer information is… Read More OECD: ‘Public release of taxpayer information is not consistent with the international standards for tax transparency’
International standards can be difficult to implement, requiring change and compromise. Once implemented, however, they ought to make life much easier for everyone. Indeed ideally they should become so universal that we barely notice them. A good example is Bluetooth, the international standard for how electronic devices talk to each other, which is now so… Read More When is an international standard not a standard?
For the press, the most eye-catching item on the agenda at the recent G-20 Finance Ministers Summit in St Petersburg was the (still rather vague) proposal to clamp down on corporate tax avoidance by tackling base erosion and profit shifting. For many STEP members, however, perhaps the most important item was the (very firm) instruction… Read More G-20 Summit – global automatic tax information exchange by 2014?
The EU Commission held a full day meeting with experts to explain its plans for developing full multilateral automatic exchange of tax information across the EU. Of, course the EU already has the Savings Tax Directive, but that only covers interest income, and plans to extend it have long been held up by objections from… Read More The European FATCA
For STEP members I suspect the G-8 meeting has confirmed a couple of things, but left others open to question. The final communique confirms that we are moving from tax information exchange on request to automatic tax information exchange as the international standard. Moreover the OECD paper released for the G8 summit suggests strongly that… Read More G-8 Wash-up
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