Fighting the menace of Black Money stashed in offshore accounts has been a key priority area for the Government.
To further this goal, the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi met with the Swiss President Johann Schneider-Ammann at Geneva on 6th June 2016 and discussed the need for expeditious Exchange of Information for combatting Tax Evasion together with an early start to negotiations on the Agreement for Automatic Exchange of Information.
As a follow up, Revenue Secretary Dr. Hasmukh Adhia and Switzerland’s State Secretary for International Financial Matters Mr. Jacques de Watteville on Wednesday (June 15) met and agreed to move towards an early agreement for the implementation of AEOI between the two countries.
It was decided that experts of both the countries will meet before mid-September, 2016 to further discuss the modalities for the reciprocal bilateral implementation of AEOI between India and Switzerland with a view to reaching an agreement at the earliest, possibly by the end of the year. Once this agreement is signed, it will be possible for India to receive from 2018 financial information of accounts held by Indian residents in Switzerland on automatic basis.
Noting the progress in bilateral tax cooperation since the last Secretary-level meeting in October 2014, the two Secretaries encouraged the competent authorities of both the countries to continue with regular bilateral meetings and contacts to further enhance the cooperation.
The issue of requests based on “stolen data” figured prominently in the talks and Revenue Secretary welcomed the decision of the Swiss Federal Council to amend the 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.
This is particularly significant in view of the recent challenges posed bythe Panama Papers where voluminous information on offshore accounts has been placed in the public domain.
The amended proposal is now with the Swiss Parliament. An early revision of the Swiss law in respect of stolen data would take the Indo-Swiss tax cooperation to a new level.
The two sides agreed to pursue the ongoing dialogue on tax and financial matters in a spirit of mutual friendship and cooperation.
