Fight against offshore tax evasion uncovers €10trn

Nearly 100 countries carried out automatic exchange of information under the common reporting standard in 2019 enabling their tax authorities to obtain data on 84 million financial accounts held offshore by their residents covering total assets of €10trn.

This is a significant increase over 2018 – the first year of such information exchange – when information on 47 million financial accounts was exchanged representing €5trn. The growth stems from an increase in the number of jurisdictions receiving information as well as a wider scope of information exchanged.

Gary Ashford partner at Harbottle & Lewis said: ‘The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has been driving the international transparency agenda for many years since at least 1998 with the Harmful Tax Practices report. Tax authorities around the globe have introduced many OECD suggested measures over the years including opportunities for many...