Switzerland is determining forms and procedure of information interchange

Swiss Federal Council has started two consultations on the issues of international exchange of tax information.

Both bills were aimed at making international exchange of tax information possible in Switzerland. One of them has its roots at OECD Convention, which was signed by Switzerland in 2013. Another one results from the participation of Switzerland in Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement.

The former provides implementation of OECD Convention concerned with administrative cooperation between states on the issues of tax information interchange. Three forms of exchange of such information are suggested by this Convention: on the request, automatic and free-will. Above-mentioned bill encourages free-will form of information interchange. It also establishes the way of exchange of information, suggesting way of straight post delivery of documents. By the way, the Federal Council foresees two special provisions: firstly, a person with respect to which exchange of tax information will occur should be notified about it; secondly, Switzerland do not allow foreign governments auditing at its territory.

Consultations on both bills will last to 21^th of April 2015. After that they will be directed to the Federal Assembly of Switzerland, which is supposed to discuss them at summer-autumn period of 2015. Consequently, even taking into account the perspective of referendum process, these bills are proposed to become legal reality at the beginning of 2017. The first act of the exchange of tax information is supposed to occur not earlier than in 2018 year.

The source: http://www.efd.admin.ch/00468/index.html?lang=en&msg-id=55889