Not worth the paper it is written on

Posted on September 14 2009

The Swiss / French double tax agreement is clearly not worth the paper it is written on:

Switzerland says it will grant France no privileges when it comes to administrative assistance in tax matters.

The finance ministry said on Monday it would stick with the standards of the Organisation for Economic Development and Co-operation and not allow so-called "fishing expeditions".

It explained that in a request for administrative assistance, the taxable person concerned must be able to be clearly identified and, in the case of banking information, it must also be possible to clearly identify the relevant bank.

Bern was reacting to a certain vagueness in the wording of a double taxation agreement worked out with France in August.

This summarises the weakness at the heart of the whole DTA / Tax Information Exchange Agreements issue. What the above says is simply this: the Swiss will give no data to France under the new DTA unless France can prove it already knows it. Which then means France doesn’t need to ask.

I therefore ask the question: why does the OECD promote such a standard when it clearly adds little or nothing to the capacity to tax?

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2 Responses

Fred Fry says:

September 15 2009 at 1:10 am

As an accountant I can only guess that you are leaving out one important detail on purpose, namely confirmation by the State of the amount of assets held in the third-country. Not a small detail if France is trying to figure out the extent of a person’s evasion.
Richard Murphy says:

September 15 2009 at 3:21 am

Fred

As an accountant who has a tax inesvtigation or two or more to his name I know if the bank account details are known I have to supply the statements or the tax risk of my client sky rockets

I.e. only the insane would let things get to this state

So your assumption is wrong – if the tax authorities know the bank account detail the likelihood of having to go to Switzerland to get the statements is very remote

So all I say is right

Richard