However, details of Swiss bank accounts held before 2018 were not made available to India, and the other given information is governed by strict confidentiality clauses. “This means the exchange takes place in September, except for corrections.”Īccording to PTI, this is the first time India has received the financial information of accounts held by Indian clients in Switzerland for 2018 and subsequent years. “According to the international agreement in place, the exchanges have to take place within nine months after the end of the respective calendar year,” the spokesperson said regarding the next exchange of information with India. The spokesperson said the next exchange will take place in 2020. The continuing surveillance of tax avoiders was a key feature of the corporate tax transparency report, which revealed that around a third of large Australian companies did not pay tax despite making a gross profit.Swiss authorities on Monday shared the first details with India about financial accounts of its residents in Swiss banks under a new automatic exchange of information framework between the two countries, said media reports.Īn unidentified spokesperson for the Federal Tax Administration (FTA) told the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency that India was among the 75 countries with which Switzerland has exchanged information about the financial accounts within the global standards of automatic exchange of information. "So the days of stashing money overseas are over."
"A disgruntled employee can download the entire database of a company - we saw that in the Panama papers - and then that can be easily shared amongst the revenue authorities of the world," Mr Hirschhorn said. Mr Hirschhorn said the digital world now made it easy for employees to highlight companies or individuals that might be involved in shady tax affairs. "The digital economy, in some ways makes it easier to move things around the world, but you also leave digital footprints everywhere and so it is possible to track people as they move things around the world." 'The days of stashing money overseas are over' "The first thing is that we know who they are, we know who the big fish are," Mr Hirschhorn said. The report pointed to 11,000 high-wealth entities, which include companies, trusts, partnerships and superannuation funds. In its corporate transparency report released yesterday, the ATO said 81 per cent of Australian private entities were linked to groups controlled by wealthy individuals. It may be legal, but complex tax minimisation structures used by the wealthy end up costing the rest of us, writes Stephen Long. "You would be surprised if there were household names on the list." But what I would say is that prominent Australians are generally good taxpayers," Mr Hirschhorn said. "I don't want to go into people on the list in terms of individuals. Mr Hirschorn would not confirm whether or not high-wealth individuals on the list monitored by the ATO included prominent Australians. But certainly there's a few people in the list that we're pretty interested about." "Of course, there's nothing wrong with holding a Swiss bank account.
"If we go to the almost cliched Swiss bank account, we just received our first list of all Australians who hold Swiss bank accounts," Mr Hirschhorn told the ABC's AM program. Australians holding Swiss bank accounts are being monitored by the Tax Office for the first time, with transactions by certain high-wealth individuals a special focus, the ABC has been told.ĭeputy tax commissioner Jeremy Hirschhorn said the ATO now has access to Swiss bank accounts, which will be tracked to ensure Australians pay their fair share of tax.