OECD proposes new disclosure rules
The Common Reporting Standard (CRS) is an approved global standard for the automatic exchange of information between tax authorities of individual states. It aims to prevent tax evasion and money laundering. Within the CRS, selected information on financial accounts and their owners are exchanged. The OECD has now come out with an initiative aiming to prevent bypassing the duties under the CRS.
The OECD proposes mandatory disclosure rules imposing a duty on certain persons (namely intermediaries and advisors) to inform tax administrators on structures or transactions (arrangements) that aim to avoid the information duty under the CRS. The rules assume that the obtained information, including the identity of any user of the given structure or beneficial owner, will be made available to other tax authorities, in accordance with the requirements of the applicable agreement on information exchange.
In December 2017, the OECD released a draft of the new rules and invited the professional public to provide comments. The comments were published in January on the OECD website. Their assessment and the possible modification of the proposed rules will follow.