The European Council has encouraged some European countries to move quickly to make a commitment to the global standard for automatic tax information exchange. These countries are to implement the standard at an early stage. Also, Austria and Luxembourg have announced that they are no longer opposing a revision to the EU Savings Directive that aims to improve levels of information exchange on savings income, and this revised Directive can therefore go ahead.
Under the global standard obliges countries will be committed to automatically exchanging information obtained from their banks and financial institutions on an annual basis. The process is being monitored by the OECD’s Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes.
