PARIS, France — The 10th Anniversary Meeting of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes (the Global Forum) being held in Paris November 26 – 27, 2019 has brought together more than 500 delegates from 131 member jurisdictions for renewed discussions on efforts to advance the tax transparency agenda.
The Bahamas is being represented at the Forum by Financial Secretary Marlon Johnson, who announced that he was headed to the Global Forum on his Facebook page on Sunday, November 24, 2019 while waiting at Lynden Pindling International Airport (LPIA) for his flight to Paris.
According to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) website, “Ten years since the G20 declared the end of banking secrecy, the international community has achieved unprecedented success in using new transparency standards to fight offshore tax evasion. Working through the Global Forum, 158 member jurisdictions have implemented robust standards that have prompted a tidal shift in exchange of information for tax purposes.
“At the heart of this shift are thousands of bilateral exchange relationships now in place, which have enabled more than 250 000 information exchange requests over the past decade. According to data in the Global Forum’s 10th anniversary report, in 2018 nearly 100 member jurisdictions automatically exchanged information on 47 million financial accounts, covering total assets of USD 4.9 trillion. In total, more than EUR 100 billion in additional tax revenue has been identified since 2009.
A recent OECD study shows that wider exchange of information driven by the Global Forum is associated with a global reduction in foreign-owned bank deposits in international financial centres (IFC) by 24% (USD 410 billion) between 2008 and 2019. The commencement of AEOI in 2017 and 2018 is associated with an average reduction in IFC bank deposits owned by non-IFC residents of 22%.
“The Global Forum has been a game-changer,” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría. “Thanks to international co‑operation, tax authorities now have access to a huge trove of information that was previously beyond reach. Tax authorities are talking to each other and taxpayers are starting to understand that there’s nowhere left to hide. The benefits to the tax system’s fairness are enormous.”
Almost all Global Forum members have eliminated bank secrecy for tax purposes, with nearly 70 jurisdictions changing their laws since 2009. Almost all members either forbid bearer shares– previously a longstanding impediment to tax compliance efforts – or ensure that the owners can be identified. Since 2017, members must also ensure transparency of the beneficial owners of legal entities, so these cannot be used to conceal ownership and evade tax.
“There is still a lot of work ahead of us,” said Zayda Manatta, head of the Global Forum Secretariat. “Members must continue efforts to ensure full implementation of existing standards and address the tax transparency challenges of an increasingly integrated and digitalised global economy.”
The Global Forum is the continuation of a forum which was created in the early 2000s in the context of the OECD’s work to address the risks to tax compliance posed by non-cooperative jurisdictions. The original members of the Global Forum consisted of OECD countries and jurisdictions that had agreed to implement transparency and exchange of information for tax purposes. The Global Forum was restructured in September 2009 in response to the G20 call to strengthen implementation of these standards.
The Global Forum now has 158 members on equal footing and is the premier international body for ensuring the implementation of the internationally agreed standards of transparency and exchange of information in the tax area. Through an in-depth peer review process, the restructured Global Forum monitors that its members fully implement the standard of transparency and exchange of information they have committed to implement. It also works to establish a level playing field, even among countries that have not joined the Global Forum.
