Fourteen countries, including Switzerland, were cited on Friday, April 19, by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for not meeting new global standards designed to crack down on tax evaders.
The OECD, a group comprising 34 industrialised nations, presented its report to the Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank governors meeting in connection with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank semi-annual conference in Washington.
The standards – which call for automatic data exchange between countries when tax cheating is suspected – reflect a tougher approach to tax avoidance agreed upon in 2009 by the world’s financial centres.
«Switzerland for the time being is stuck,» said Pascal Saint-Amans, director of OECD’s Centre for Tax Policy.
«Significant progress has been made,» he said, «but significant progress remains to be made.»
Swiss self defense
Finance Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf represented Switzerland at the meeting of the G20 at the invitation of Russia, this year’s G20 chair. She presented a progress report from the Global Forum on Transparency and Information Exchange for Tax Purposes, showing that Switzerland has undertaken to comply with the standards and is currently putting them into practice.
The report was to «show that the Federal Council has introduced solutions for all of the issues criticised by the Global Forum», according to a press statement on April 18.
Switzerland has been under fire for several years for the sheltering of taxable income by its banking sector. UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank, paid $780 million in 2009 and handed over thousands of client names to settle US charges that it helped US citizens hide funds.
Combatting banking secrecy
On Friday in Washington, the finance ministers of the G20 countries urged the international community to do away with banking secrecy, noting that the global economy has avoided «major risks», but remains unequal.
Tax evasion has dominated European headlines in recent weeks, following the admission by a disgraced former French minister that he held a Swiss account, and the recent leak of data about thousands of holders of secret bank accounts worldwide.