A global minimum corporate tax regime could benefit wealth management centres such as Hong Kong and Singapore, because they are “jurisdictions with substance” that would maintain a lower corporate tax rate, even if a global minimum corporate tax rate becomes effective. US President Joe Biden’s support for a global minimum corporate tax rate, as proposed by the OECD, has trained […]

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The Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes (the “Global Forum”) held its 10th-anniversary meeting in Paris last week. It had cause for celebration: ten years since the G20 Leaders declared that “the era of banking secrecy is over”, the Global Forum has achieved great progress in implementing the standards for international tax transparency and exchange […]

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Although the new economic substance requirements for offshore centres have affected some HNWIs, estate and trust structures require only “slight tweaks” to remain compliant, according to Dawn Quek, principal at Baker McKenzie Wong & Leow. Following in the footsteps of the European Union (EU), the OECD issued an economic substance rule which came into effect on 1 January. Accordingly, entities incorporated in […]

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With the first international Common Reporting Standard (CRS) exchange of information due to commence this month, private banks should be aware of “incredibly complex” rules published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) which will require greater attention than many would expect, according to a CRS expert. The OECD published mandatory disclosure rules (MDRs) on 9 March which […]

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For offshore private banks, the OECD-developed Common Reporting Standard (CRS) regime suggests an opportunity for lower-cost tax reporting and standardised account opening. However, domestic banks in Taiwan are more pessimistic about the impact of the regime, which in practice, should come into effect in the jurisdiction on 1 January 2019. Although Taiwan cannot officially join the CRS regime as an […]

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Singapore signed an agreement relating to the automatic exchange of financial account information (AEOI) scheme with Switzerland yesterday, ahead of a working meeting of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes, held in Geneva. The bilateral agreement was signed by Huey Min Chia-Tern, deputy commissioner of the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore, and Alexander Karrer, […]

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With China readying for the implementation of the common reporting standard (CRS) from July, a law firm has advised Chinese citizens that they will likely not be able to avoid being subject to the automatic exchange of financial account information (AEOI) by changing nationality. A joint statement titled “Managing methods for due diligence on non-resident financial accounts” (translated from Chinese: 《非居民金融账户涉税信息尽职调查管理办法》) […]

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Indonesia’s finance minister said yesterday that “bank secrecy has ended with regard to tax purposes”, after the country announced progress in its preparations for the automatic exchange of information (AEOI) scheme. According to Indonesian publication netral news, finance minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati confirmed that the minimum account balance to be reported under the AEOI scheme in Indonesia will be US$250,000, […]

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The Hong Kong government this week signed competent authority agreements (CAAs) – relating to the automatic exchange of financial account information (AEOI) – with two more countries, as part of its efforts to speed up its AEOI collaborations to avoid being labelled as “non-cooperative” by the OECD. The government’s information website said Portugal and South Africa became the eighth and ninth […]

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Following German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble’s weekend visit to Singapore, Germany and Singapore have agreed to further strengthen their double-taxation agreement in order to meet international standards on information sharing. This comes in the wake of a German-Swiss tax treaty, signed April 2012, which itself comes into effect next year. According to a statement released by Germany’s Federal Ministry of […]

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