Automatic exchange of tax information

Many developed countries are taking a confident course towards deoffshorization, because of the fight against tax evasion by large companies

It is impossible to completely ban offshore companies. Therefore governments are actively working to identify the real owners of offshore companies. They also tighten control over financial transactions.

For the implementation of the Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD) in many EU countries, registries of the ultimate beneficiaries of companies are already in force or are being introduced.

In the Netherlands and Great Britain, the data of such registers are freely available. At the same time, Poland, Germany and Spain are inclined to restrict access to registries, allowing only competent authorities to get full information on beneficiaries.

Also, the member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the EU countries and the United States, have signed the Multilateral Convention on Cooperation between Competent Bodies on the Automatic Exchange of Information according to the CRS standard. It has received the status of officially enshrined at the international level.

Information to be disclosed includes information on dividends, interest, income from the sale of assets, real estate, funds in the bank accounts of the beneficiaries of trusts, shareholders and members of companies, etc.

This data will be global and cross-jurisdictional, industry-wide, and linked to other databases.

The list of signatory countries with the intended date of the beginning of the exchange of information on July 2, 2017 includes 93 jurisdictions.

Ukraine is not on this list yet.

Nevertheless, the State Agency for Electronic Governance of Ukraine signed a memorandum of cooperation with the National Branch of Transparency International (a non-governmental organization for the fight against corruption) and the global register of beneficiaries of OpenOwnership. The implementation of it will transfer information on the ultimate beneficiaries to the global register of beneficial owners of companies.

Also, Ukraine announced its readiness to join the international system for the exchange of financial information. As a result of joining the exchange, Ukraine plans to receive information about its residents from the tax authorities of the signatory countries already in 2018.

However, it should be understood that fully implementing the automatic exchange of financial information is a complex, lengthy and costly process.

It is necessary to sign a number of international treaties and the subsequent implementation of their norms into national legislation, as well as the development of the necessary infrastructure.