G-20 leaders commit to automatic exchange of tax information

“Profits should be taxed where economic activities deriving the profits are performed and where value is created”—so said the leaders of the G-20 major economies as they endorsed the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD’s) global standard for automatic exchange of tax information at the G-20 summit in Brisbane, Australia, on Sunday. The leaders committed their countries to automatically exchanging information with each other by the end of 2018, subject to the passage of enabling legislation in the affected countries.

Members of the G-20 that had not before now signed on to the OECD’s information-exchange program include Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United States. The United States has been pursuing similar information on its own under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, P.L. 111-147.

The OECD has been encouraging automatic exchange of financial information among countries as a way to prevent multinational companies from moving profits to low-tax jurisdictions.

—Alistair Nevius (anevius@aicpa.org) is the JofA’s editor-in-chief, tax.