India, Swiss agree to speed up tax info exchange

In a follow-up to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pitch against undisclosed money during his Switzerland visit last week, the two sides have officially come together on resolving for early implementation of Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) to catch tax evaders. This was agreed at a meeting between Hasmukh Adhia, revenue secretary, and Jacquesde Watterville, the Swiss state secretary for international financial matters, here on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Modi in his discussion with Swiss President Johann Schneider-Ammann at Geneva on June 6 had sought faster exchange of information to fight tax evasion, beside an early start to negotiations on the Agreement for Automatic Exchange of Information.

At the meeting on Wednesday, the two sides decided experts of both countries would meet before mid-September to further discuss how to reach an agreement at the earliest. "Once this agreement is signed, it will be possible for India to receive from 2018 he financial information on accounts held by Indian residents in Switzerland on an automatic basis," said the government. According to the joint statement, a team of officers from India would visit Switzerland for discussion on expeditious resolution of pending exchange of information requests. The issue of requests based on “stolen data” figured prominently in the talks and Adhia welcomed the decision of the Swiss Federal Council to amend their Tax Administrative Assistance Act in accordance with the OECD standard, and provide administrative assistance in requests based on data obtained in breach of Swiss law, the government said.

This is significant in the light of the Panama Papers leak in April, where voluminous information on offshore accounts has been placed in the public domain.

The amended proposal is now with the Swiss legislature. "An early revision of the Swiss law in respect of stolen data would take the Indo-Swiss tax cooperation to a new level," said the statement.