HMRC have announced: A Protocol delivering comprehensive exchange of information up to OECD and international tax standards between Switzerland and the UK, which covers UK taxes of all kinds, was signed in London today by The Financial Secretary to the Treasury, the Right Honourable Stephen Timms MP and the Swiss Ambassador to the UK, His
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The Guardian’s editorial this morning picks up the Cayman theme. Normally I won’t reproduce whole stories for copyright reasons, but since I gave them this exclusive I trust they’ll forgive me: Gustav, Ivan, Paloma: the Cayman Islands have withstood many a hurricane. Now, however, it faces the perfect storm: Hurricane Lehman. This one has been
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Angel Gurria, boss of the OECD had an article in the Guardian yesterday: A quiet revolution is under way in international governance. Building on more than a decade of work at the OECD, governments are finally getting to grips with one of the biggest threats to fair and effective public financing. It seems almost unbelievable,
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Switzerland has signed its second double taxation agreement, with Luxembourg. – swissinfo. Switzerland on Tuesday signed a revised double taxation agreement with Luxembourg, easing the restrictions on the exchange of tax information between the two countries. It is the second of 12 such agreements Switzerland needs to sign in order to be removed from the
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The Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development promotes greater transparency in the global financial system, as a key measure required to alleviate poverty and maximize growth in developing countries. We may be at a rare moment when the interests of rich and poor countries are synonymous. At the heart of the current worldwide
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The EU announced two days ago that: In the framework of its strategy to combat tax evasion and fraud ( IP/06/697 ), today the European Commission adopted a proposal for a recast of the Regulation on administrative cooperation in the field of valued added tax, extending and reinforcing the legal framework for the exchange of
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I continue to be intrigued at the reaction to my blog on the OECD conference scheduled for 1-2 September that I posted yesterday. This reaction reached the Wall Street Journal this morning, a heavily reduced version of what they said being: The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is proposing to greatly strengthen an informal
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In May the USA said it wanted significant tax reform: The Qualified Intermediary ("QI") program seeks to ensure that appropriate U.S. withholding is imposed on foreign persons. The proposed rules would require foreign financial institutions to withhold and report on foreign income and accounts of U.S. and foreign persons. Foreign financial institutions would be required
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Associated press were one of the many agencies I spoke to yesterday (some of whom have given no credit for the data supplied – such is life). The have a story that in one incarnation is here:  Liechtenstein’s agreement to help Britain recover taxes on wealth hidden away in the tiny Alpine principality by U.K.
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