{"id":19998,"date":"2013-04-08T06:52:05","date_gmt":"2013-04-08T05:52:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=19998"},"modified":"2013-04-08T06:52:05","modified_gmt":"2013-04-08T05:52:05","slug":"is-luxembourg-smelling-the-coffee-on-bank-transparency-or-just-playing-a-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2013\/04\/08\/is-luxembourg-smelling-the-coffee-on-bank-transparency-or-just-playing-a-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Luxembourg smelling the coffee on bank transparency, or just playing a game?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are several reports this morning that Luxembourg is backing down on the issue of banking secrecy. As the BBC put it<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Luxembourg would consider greater transparency of its banking sector to help curb tax evasion, the finance minister has told a German newspaper.<\/p>\n

In an interview published on Sunday, Luc Frieden said he wanted to \"strengthen co-operation with foreign tax authorities\".<\/p>\n

Speaking to Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper, Mr Frieden acknowledged that other countries were increasingly demanding more information on what their citizens were doing with their money in foreign banks.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"The international trend is going toward an automatic exchange of bank deposit information. We no longer strictly oppose that,\" he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Now, let's not go wild with excitement: \"strictly opposed\" still means they will fight tooth and nail, but this is important. I'm afraid it's not because of new tax haven revelations that this has happened; it is entirely because of the US FATCA. Luxembourg has agreed to sign a FATCA\u00a0agreement\u00a0with the USA and as a result has no choice but offer a similar deal to all 26 of its EU\u00a0partners. With Austria being in the same boat the obstacle to major reform of the\u00a0European Union Savings Tax Directive should be removed.<\/p>\n

I won't be counting my\u00a0chickens\u00a0yet, but if this is in fact playing a game of\u00a0appearing\u00a0to move towards cooperation without duress despite the fact that Luxembourg has no\u00a0choice\u00a0but comply that's a game I can live with, on one\u00a0condition\u00a0 And that's that it's over, quickly.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are several reports this morning that Luxembourg is backing down on the issue of banking secrecy. As the BBC put it: Luxembourg would consider
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,130,103,55,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eu-std","category-information-exchange","category-luxembourg","category-tax-evasion","category-tax-havens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}