G20 leaders endorse new international standard for tax transparency

5 September 2016, G20 leaders meeting at the Hangzhou Summit reiterated their call for all relevant countries, including all financial centres and jurisdictions, that have not yet committed to implementing the standard of automatic exchange of information to do so without delay and by 2018 at the latest, as well as to sign and ratify the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters.

In a communiqué, G20 leaders further endorsed the OECD proposals on the objective criteria to identify non-cooperative jurisdictions with respect to tax transparency and asked the OECD to report back to the finance ministers and central bank governors by June 2017 on the progress made by jurisdictions on tax transparency, and on how the Global Forum will manage the country review process in response to supplementary review requests of countries.

It called on the OECD to prepare, by the July 2017 G20 Leaders’ Summit, a list of those jurisdictions that “have not yet sufficiently progressed toward a satisfactory level of implementation of the agreed international standards on tax transparency”. Defensive measures will be considered against listed jurisdictions.

The leaders further called on the FATF and the OECD Global Forum to make initial proposals by the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting in October on ways to improve the implementation of the international standards on transparency, including on the availability of beneficial ownership information of legal persons and legal arrangements, and its international exchange.

The leaders reaffirmed the importance advancing cooperation on the OECD/G20 base erosion and profits shifting (BEPS) plan, and welcomed the establishment of the G20/OECD inclusive framework on BEPS and its first meeting in Kyoto.

“We support a timely, consistent and widespread implementation of the BEPS package and call upon all relevant and interested countries and jurisdictions that have not yet committed to the BEPS package to do so and join the framework on an equal footing,” the communiqué said.