THE
Swiss National Council has recently adopted new law on administrative assistance
in tax matters . The National Council also voted in favour for revisions to the
Swiss-US double tax agreement (DTA).The new administrative assistance law shall
adhere to the new version of double taxation agreements that Switzerland has
signed with over twenty different countries. It is also designed keeping in mind
the OECD standards.
The
new law paves the way for implementation of the planned Swiss-US double tax
treaty, which allows for grouped requests to be submitted based on patterns of
behaviour by individuals or by financial institutions. This will however be
granted in the first instance to the US authorities. Defending the government's
new law, Swiss Finance Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf insisted that
administrative assistance would only be provided in cases of strong evidence of
wrongdoing and would not be forthcoming on the basis of information obtained
from stolen tax data.
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