NEW DELHI, JUNE 11, 2010: IF the IRS Commissioner had his way, cross border tax evasion would be history.

According to Mr Douglas H. Shulman, Commissioner, Internal Revenue Service, US, to combat offshore tax evasion, coordinated action at multilateral levels is necessary to enforce compliance. Just cooperation and information exchanges between countries are not enough.

Speaking as Chairman of OECD's Forum on Tax Administration (FTA) Mr Shulman informed that to improve international tax administration, authorities were working on developing a protocol for joint audits with other countries. This would essentially be a process where two or more countries join together to carry out a single audit of a company with cross-border business activities.

“This could reduce taxpayer burden, especially for large multinational corporations that must face audits in multiple jurisdictions on the same set of transactions, Mr Shulman said in his address before the OECD and Business and Industry Advisory Committee (BIAC).

He also stated that offshore tax compliance was a priority and the age of bank secrecy had to come to a close. There is need for tax bodies to come together to create pressure on bank secrecy and uncooperative jurisdictions, he stated. This was happening as more and more of  former bank secrecy jurisdictions had agreed to adopt the international tax standards on information exchanges developed by the OECD.

Shulman also opined that the future of international tax administration had to move from just cooperation and sharing of information to the next stage of planning actual coordinated efforts among countries.