Tulip Siddiq – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tulip Siddiq on 2016-05-04.

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, with which countries the UK has negotiated agreements on the exchange of tax information which (a) are in compliance with the OECD’s standard for such agreements and (b) provide for the automatic exchange of tax information since the OECD’s standard was released in July 2014.

Mr David Gauke

The UK has exchange of tax information agreements with 142 different jurisdictions, through Double Taxation Agreements and Tax Information Exchange Agreements, and also as party to the OECD/Council of Europe Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters (the ‘Multilateral Convention’).

A list of the international agreements the UK is party to can be found on Gov.uk under ‘Tax Treaties’, and details of which jurisdictions have entered the Multilateral Convention into force alongside the UK can be found on the OECD website.

Of the 142 international tax agreements the UK is party to, only the following 12 do not meet the international standard for exchange of information on request:

1. Egypt

2. Fiji

3. Gambia

4. Israel

5. Jamaica

6. Kenya

7. Namibia

8. Oman

9. Papua new Guinea

10. Sri Lanka

11. Swaziland

12. Zimbabwe

    That international standard does not apply to automatic exchange. The standard for automatic exchange the question refers to (as published by the OECD in July 2014) is the Common Reporting Standard, the globally acceptable standard on automatic exchange of information with respect of financial accounts information.

    The means of ensuring this standard was through a common Competent Authority Agreement, which supplements the international tax agreement allowing for exchange of tax information, rather than being an international tax agreement itself. There is no standard for automatic exchange in international tax agreements; just whether the agreement allows for it or not.

    It is the UK policy to interpret international tax agreements to allow automatic exchange even where not expressly stated, with the exception of cases where the exchange of information provision clearly uses restrictive wording that would preclude such an exchange.